March 18 is the feast of St. Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 313-387), bishop of Jerusalem and Doctor of the Church. Born at or near Jerusalem, he was ordained priest around 345 and bishop in 350. His Catechetical Lectures — twenty-four instructions given to candidates for baptism at the Holy Sepulchre — are the earliest surviving full course of pre-baptismal catechesis, and the first witness to the liturgy of Holy Week as it was practised in the Holy City.
Cyril's episcopate was troubled. He was exiled three times by Arian emperors and councils, and reinstated three times. He was present at the Council of Constantinople in 381, where the Nicene faith was reaffirmed, and died in Jerusalem in 387. He was proclaimed Doctor of the Church in 1882 by Pope Leo XIII.
The Catechetical Lectures are the principal pilgrimage text of 4th-century Jerusalem: they describe the liturgy of baptism at the Holy Sepulchre, the processions to the Mount of Olives and Bethlehem, and the veneration of the Cross — discovered, by tradition, by Helena in 326, within Cyril's lifetime. From Jerusalem, where he was bishop and where the catechesis was given, the March 18 feast is the feast of the bishop who taught the faith at the empty tomb.
