By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — If the immensity of the universe tempts a person to think of the Earth as only one small planet among many, a recent talk about two saints in the ninth-century Catholic Church in the East was a reminder of how many countless developments have occurred in the millennia of history on just this one planet.
Saints Cyril and Methodius were fraternal brothers known as The Apostles to the Slavs who labored as missionaries considerably before the historic schism of 1054 went on to split the Church between Rome and Constantinople.
Although some people may regard the two men as figures of Eastern Christianity, in their time they were united with Rome while working to bring the faith to Slavic speakers in their own language, not Latin or Greek.
A look at their lives was presented at the Institute of Catholic Theology (ICT) here on February 4 by Will Wright, an instructor at St. John Paul II Catholic High School, located in the western Phoenix suburb of Avondale. Wright holds a dual course of study master’s degree in Catechetics & Evangelization and Theology & Christian Ministry from the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio.
The ICT is an evangelization program based at Phoenix’s St. Thomas the Apostle Church.
Wright said he wanted to give a shout-out to the local St. Stephen’s Byzantine Catholic Cathedral, a few miles northwest of St. Thomas the Apostle, where the liturgical celebrations of the Eastern Church are in unity with Rome.
The rest of this article is a summary of the talk Wright gave to the ICT.
Cyril and Methodius, the sons of an imperial administrator, were born in the first quarter of the ninth century in Thessalonica, the second-largest city in the Eastern Roman Empire, behind Constantinople.
They were born into a time of transition from the Romanesque system of government to something resembling feudalism, where a land-owning noble has serfs or vassals under him who get things out of the ground, whether by farming or tapping resources like minerals. In exchange, the noble protects them.
In 840 Methodius decided he wanted to leave behind earthly power and become a monk, to live in contemplation, shirking off any authority.
Cyril, regarded as a brilliant man, became a priest in Constantinople and a professor and also served as secretary to the patriarch of Constantinople and as librarian of the archive attached to the Hagia Sophia cathedral.
He was sent as a missionary to the Saracens, to try to evangelize these Muslims, then he and Methodius were sent to central Europe.
The language of the Slavs there was “barbarous,” meaning not speaking Greek. These barbarians were living under a democracy and worshiping one pagan god, Perun, the god of lightning, not a number of gods, so it was almost as if God was preparing them for Christianity.
They were a warrior people living a hard life in marshes and swamps. Their ways weren’t softness and comfort.
Prince Rostislav of Great Moravia had asked for missionaries from Constantinople so that he could send to his people “a bishop and teacher . . . able to explain to them the true Christian faith in their own language.”
The prince said many Christian teachers arrived from Italy, Greece, and Germany. “But we Slavs . . . have no one to direct us towards the truth and instruct us in an understandable way.”
In 863 Cyril and Methodius started work among the Slavs and used Slavonic in the Divine Liturgy.
Cyril invented the Cyrillic alphabet — what some people think of as the Russian alphabet — to allow him and his brother to translate the Divine Liturgy and Scripture into the Slavonic language.
Pope Adrian II authorized use of Slavonic in the Divine Liturgy in 868. The following year, 869, Cyril died and Adrian II appointed Methodius as an archbishop.
However, when Prince Rostislav died, his successor didn’t support Methodius, who was put on trial by German clergy, put in jail and treated horribly.
When the reigning Pope John VIII learned of this, he intervened and called Methodius back to Rome in order to answer questions about the use of Slavonic in the liturgy. Once again, its use was approved.
In 882 Methodius returned to Constantinople to try to strengthen his position in the Church there.
Constantinople was the name for the city later called Istanbul.
Rome and Constantinople weren’t so far apart, in that a person could travel the reasonable distance between them by boat, unlike the modern-day United States and China, which are on opposite sides of the world.
In his last years Methodius made further translations of Sacred Scripture, liturgical books, and a collection of ecclesiastical and civil laws.
After his death, Pope Stephen VI forbade the use of the Slavonic liturgy, so the followers of Cyril and Methodius were sent out from Moravia, to go all over.
God always brings a greater good from unfortunate events, so the two men’s influence was widely spread within a few years.
In 1880 Saints Cyril and Methodius were added to the liturgical calendar of the Roman Church by Pope Leo XIII. In 1980 Pope John Paul II, himself a Slav, proclaimed them to be the co-patrons of Europe, along with St. Benedict of Nursia.
The language of the liturgy doesn’t have to be Latin. Its first language was Aramaic, and Hebrew.
Bishops And Latin
Taking audience questions after his presentation, Wright said many things happened after Vatican II that weren’t done by Vatican II, which said Latin should be retained in the liturgy and did not authorize smashing religious statues or ripping out altar rails.
Also, he said, familiarity with Latin was a useful way for bishops to communicate in the universal Church. “At the very least, I think every bishop should be fluent in Latin,” so they can speak with each other, which was the case in 1960, before Vatican II, Wright said.
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