Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.
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Cyril of Alexandria
AD 444
Grievous is the sorrow that has consumed your heart, He says, and bitter the affliction that has cast you down. For you consider that separation from Me will be fraught with pain to you, and your apprehension is well grounded. For you will certainly have to encounter all the trials which I have already foretold, and will endure the fury of impious persecutions. Considering then that expediency should always be preferred to pleasure, I will tell you the truth: It is expedient for you that I go away. And we will make all our thoughts subject to the Saviour Who is over us, though I think that the saying may be likely to cause no little perplexity to a simple-minded hearer. For surely the thought will arise in him and occur to his mind, that, if it was better that Christ should go away, His Presence with them could not but infer some loss. And if our advantage lay in His Ascension, surely the reverse would result from His remaining with us. The question may perhaps perplex an unaided judgment; but the man who is guided by knowledge from above to an accurate comprehension of the saying can find here no occasion of stumbling, but will rather discover its true meaning.
We must therefore ponder over and clearly understand this thought in particular, that according to the saying, There is a time for everything, and all things are good in their season. At the fitting season, then, it was well for Christ to be present in this world in the flesh: but, on the other hand, when the time came that was proper and suitable for the complete fulfilment of His purposes, He ascended to the Father. And the charge can in nowise be brought against Him that His presence with His disciples was not very advantageous to them, because at the last His departure became necessary. Nor, again, can He be reproached at all because advantage resulted from His departure, inasmuch as His Presence was profitable to them. For both these events, coming to pass at the proper season, brought us advantage. And that, briefly touching on the drift of the inquiry, we may make it easier for our brethren to apprehend it, let us by way of digression give an explanation of the cause of the Incarnation of the Only-begotten; and, in addition, of the advantage which would result from His departure.
In order then that He might free from corruption and death those that lay under the condemnation of that ancient curse, He became Man; investing Himself, Who was by Nature the Life, with our nature. For thus the power of death was overcome, and the dominion of corruption, which had gained sway over us, was destroyed. And, since the Divine Nature is wholly free from inclination to sin, He exalted us by His own Flesh. For in Him we all have our being, inasmuch as He manifested Himself as Man. In order that He might mortify the members, which are upon the earth, that is, the affections of the flesh, and might quench the law of sin that holds sway in our members, and also that He might sanctify our nature, and prove Himself our Pattern and Guide in the path to piety, and that the revelation of the truth according to knowledge, and of a way of life beyond possibility of error might be complete----all this Christ, when He became Man, accomplished. It was necessary then to confer on the nature of man the height of blessedness, and not only to rid it of death and sin, but to raise it even to the heavens themselves, and to make man a companion of the angels, and a partaker in their joys. And just as by His own Resurrection He renewed in us the power of escaping corruption, even so He thought it right to open out for us the path heavenwards, and to set in the Presence of the Father the race of man who had been cast out of His sight owing to Adam's transgression. And the inspired Paul, adopting this view, says: For Christ entered not into a holy place made with hands, nor into one like in pattern to the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear before the Face of God for us. He tells us that being ever in His Father's Presence, and partaking of His Nature by reason of the sameness of Their Essence, He now manifests Himself not for His own sake but for us. For I will repeat what I have already said. He places us in the sight of the Father, by departing into heaven as the firstfruits of humanity. For just as, being Himself the Life by Nature, He is said to have died and risen again for our sake, even so He is said, ever beholding His Father and being in like manner beholden of Him, to appear as Man now, that is, when He has taken human nature upon Him, not for His own sake but for us. And as this one thing was seen to be lacking in His dispensation to us-ward, our ascension into heaven has been prepared for us in Christ, Who was the firstfruits and the first of men to ascend. For He ascended thither as our forerunner, as the inspired Paul also himself says. There, as Man, He is in very truth still the High Priest of our souls, our Comforter, and the propitiation for our sins; and, as God and Lord by Nature, He sits on His own Father's throne, and even on us too will the glory thereof be reflected. For this reason also Paul said concerning the Father: And He raised us up with Him, and made us to sit with Him in the heavenly places in Christ. When then His mission on earth was accomplished, it was necessary that He should fulfil what yet remained----His Ascension to the Father. Wherefore He says: It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away the Comforter cannot come unto you.
Come, then, let us add yet another reflection, profitable and true, to our previous investigations. All His work on earth had indeed been accomplished, as we just now affirmed. It was however surely necessary that we should become partakers and sharers of the Divine Nature of the Word; or rather that, giving up the life that originally belonged to us, we should be transformed into another, and the very elements of our being be changed into newness of life well-pleasing to God. But it was impossible to attain this in any other way except by fellowship in, and partaking of, the Holy Spirit. The most fitting and appropriate time, then, for the mission and descent of the Holy Spirit to us was that which in due season came----I mean, the occasion of our Saviour Christ's departure hence. For while yet present in the body with those who believed on Him, He showed Himself, I think, the bestower of every blessing. But when time and necessity demanded His restoration to His Father in heaven, it was essential that He should associate Himself by the Spirit with His worshippers, and should dwell in our hearts by faith, in order that, having His presence within us, we might cry with boldness, Abba, Father, and might readily advance in all virtue, and might also be found strong and invincible against the wiles of the devil, and the assaults of men, as possessing the omnipotent Spirit.
For it might easily be shown, both from the Old and New Scriptures, that the Holy Spirit changes the disposition of those in Whom He is, and in Whom He dwells, and moulds them into newness of life. For the inspired Samuel, when he was discoursing with Saul, said: And the Spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, and thou shalt be turned into another man. And the blessed Paul thus writes: But we all, with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit. Now the Lord is the Spirit. You see that the Spirit moulds as it were into another likeness those in whom He visibly abides. For He easily turns them from an inclination to dwell on the things of earth, to the contemplation only of that which is in heaven; and from an unmanly cowardice to a courageous disposition. And that we shall find the disciples thus affected and steeled by the Holy Spirit into indifference to the assaults of their persecutors, and laying fast hold of the love that is towards Christ, can no way be questioned. Therefore the saying of the Saviour is true, when He says, "It is expedient for you that I depart into heaven." For that was the occasion of the descent of the Spirit.
