Chrismation and the Seal

After rising from the font and being clothed in white, the newly baptized of fourth-century Jerusalem were anointed with fragrant chrism — the holy myron — upon the forehead, ears, nostrils, and breast. St. Cyril’s third Mystagogical Catechesis expounds this anointing as the gift and seal of the Holy Spirit, paralleling Christ’s own anointing by the Spirit at the Jordan, and insists that the consecrated chrism is “no longer simple ointment” but the gracious gift of Christ and the Spirit. This makes the Jerusalem witness the earliest clear testimony to post-baptismal chrismation as a distinct mystery conferring the Spirit, a landmark in the history of the sacrament.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Church Father)

From the Font to the Chrism

The third lecture takes up the moment immediately after baptism. Risen from the threefold immersion and clothed in the white garment of the newly enlightened, the neophyte does not yet pass to the altar; first he is anointed with chrism (Mystagogical Catechesis 3.1; trans. McCauley & Stephenson, FOTC 64). From this point the work is cited as MC. Cyril marks the sequence deliberately: the water-rite has buried and raised the candidate with Christ (see Baptism and Renunciation), and now a second and distinct rite seals upon him the gift that corresponds to the Resurrection — the descent of the Holy Spirit. The fragrant ointment used is the myron (μύρον), a consecrated perfumed oil sharply distinguished from the exorcised oil of the pre-baptismal anointing: the one armed the wrestler against the devil, this one bestows the Spirit.

A word on attribution is owed here as in the companion file. The Cyrilline authorship of the MC is debated — the manuscripts variously name Cyril, his successor John II, or both — and the repository treats the matter fully and without adjudication in The Authorship Question. The rite is read here as the Jerusalem rite of which Cyril and his see are the witnesses, whatever the precise hand behind the lectures.

The Jordan Parallel: Anointed as Christ Was Anointed

Cyril grounds the meaning of the chrismation in the baptism of Christ. As Jesus, coming up from the waters of the Jordan, received the visible descent of the Holy Spirit “in bodily shape, like a dove” resting upon Him, so the neophyte, coming up from the font, receives the anointing of the same Spirit (MC 3.1; trans. NPNF II/7, citing Matt. 3:16 and Isa. 61:1). The parallel is exact and deliberate: Christ was “anointed with the spiritual oil of gladness, that is, with the Holy Spirit,” and “having been made partakers of Christ, you are properly called christs” — anointed ones — “and of you God said, Touch not my christs” (MC 3.1; trans. NPNF II/7, citing Ps. 105:15). The very name Christ means “anointed,” and the chrismation is what makes the Christian a Christian in fact as well as in name. By it the baptized becomes “an anointed one,” configured to the Anointed, sharing through the Spirit in the messianic anointing of the Lord.

The Consecration of the Myron and the Spirit’s Presence

Cyril is precise about how the chrism comes to bear this power, and here his sacramental realism is at its sharpest. The ointment does not act by its own nature. Over the prepared chrism the Holy Spirit is invoked in an act of consecration (an epiclesis over the oil), and by that invocation it is transformed in its efficacy: “But beware of supposing this to be plain ointment. For as the Bread of the Eucharist, after the invocation of the Holy Ghost, is no longer simple bread, but the Body of Christ, so also this holy ointment is no longer simple ointment, nor (so to say) common, after the invocation, but the gracious gift of Christ and the Holy Ghost, and is made effectual by the presence of His Godhead” (MC 3.3; trans. NPNF II/7). The structure of the argument is unmistakable and the parallel is Cyril’s own: as the eucharistic bread after the epiclesis is no longer mere bread, so the chrism after its invocation is no longer mere oil (see Eucharistic Realism, and The Jerusalem Anaphora). The chrism is further called the antitype of the chrism with which Christ was anointed — the figure answering to the reality of the Spirit’s own anointing of the Lord — so that what is signified is genuinely conferred (MC 3.1). Sign and gift are held together: the visible oil really mediates the invisible Spirit.

The Sealing of the Senses

The anointing was applied to particular members of the body, and Cyril interprets each. The chrism was traced upon the forehead, the ears, the nostrils, and the breast (MC 3.4; trans. FOTC 64). Each anointing seals a faculty for its new sanctified use. The forehead is sealed so that the Christian may “with unveiled face” reflect the glory of the Lord, and may bear openly and without shame the mark of his confession (MC 3.4, alluding to 2 Cor. 3:18). The ears are anointed that they may have ears to hear the divine mysteries; the nostrils, that receiving the divine fragrance the Christian may say with the Apostle that we are “a sweet savour of Christ” (MC 3.4, citing 2 Cor. 2:15); the breast, that “having put on the breastplate of righteousness” the neophyte may stand against the assaults of the devil (MC 3.4, alluding to Eph. 6:14). The anointing of the senses thus consecrates the whole person, member by member, for the perception and confession of the things of God. Cyril rounds on the gift with a benediction: “Having been counted worthy of this Holy Chrism, ye are called Christians” (MC 3.5).

The Seal of the Spirit

The governing category Cyril gives to the rite is the seal (σφραγίς). The chrismation is the sealing with the Holy Spirit, the indelible mark of the Christian’s belonging to God and the down-payment of the life of the age to come, after the Pauline image of being “sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise” (MC 3, alluding to Eph. 1:13; 2 Cor. 1:21–22). Where the font effected death and new birth, the seal confers the abiding gift of the Spirit who indwells the baptized — the same Spirit whose person and work the Church confesses in her pneumatology (see Pneumatology). The neophyte is now equipped, sealed, and named: a christos, ready to approach the altar for the first communion that crowns the initiation.

Historical Importance: The Earliest Clear Witness

The historical weight of MC 3 is hard to overstate. In Cyril’s Jerusalem we have the earliest clear and detailed witness to post-baptismal chrismation treated as a distinct mystery (sacrament) — a separate rite, with its own matter, formula, and effect, conferring the Holy Spirit as something other than and additional to the water-baptism that precedes it (Doval, Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogue; Yarnold, Cyril of Jerusalem, Routledge 2000). Earlier sources know an anointing in the baptismal process, but it is in the Jerusalem mystagogy that the post-baptismal seal stands out so unambiguously as a Spirit-conferring sacrament in its own right. This is a foundational document for the history of what the East calls chrismation and the West confirmation: the moment at which the gift of the Spirit is liturgically distinguished from the bath of regeneration (Day, The Baptismal Liturgy of Jerusalem, Ashgate 2007; Yarnold, The Awakening of the West).

That very distinctness is also part of the dating debate. [Disputed: dating/authorship of the post-baptismal seal] Some scholars argue that the clean separation of a Spirit-conferring chrismation from baptism reflects a development of the middle and later fourth century, and that its prominence in the MC is one of the considerations bearing on whether the lectures are Cyril’s own or stem from the episcopate of his successor John II — that is, on whether they witness the rite of the 350s–360s or of the 380s–390s (Day, The Baptismal Liturgy of Jerusalem; Yarnold, Cyril of Jerusalem). The repository neither presses nor resolves this; the source-critical question is laid out fully in The Authorship Question. What is not in dispute is that the Jerusalem church of Cyril’s era is our first clear voice for chrismation as a discrete mystery of the Spirit.

References

Cyril of Jerusalem (attrib.). Mystagogical Catecheses (Catecheses mystagogicae), esp. MC 3. PG 33; critical edition Auguste Piédagnel, ed., Catéchèses mystagogiques, Sources Chrétiennes 126. Paris: Cerf, 1966.
The Catechetical Lectures of S. Cyril of Jerusalem, trans. Edwin Hamilton Gifford. NPNF, 2nd ser., vol. 7 (NPNF II/7).
McCauley, Leo P., and Anthony A. Stephenson, trans. The Works of Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, vol. 2. Fathers of the Church 64. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1970.
Yarnold, Edward. Cyril of Jerusalem. The Early Church Fathers. London: Routledge, 2000.
Doval, Alexis James. Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogue: The Authorship of the Mystagogic Catecheses. Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2001.
Day, Juliette. The Baptismal Liturgy of Jerusalem: Fourth- and Fifth-Century Evidence from Palestine, Syria and Egypt. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.
Yarnold, Edward. The Awakening of the West: The Origins of Christian Initiation and the Reform of Baptism. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994.