Undusted Texts

  It is not enough to escape evil, if we are to attain the kingdom of the heavens, but many works of virtue are needed. So that we might escape Gehenna, we must cleave from wickedness; so that we might attain the kingdom, we must cleave to virtue….Not doing good is a part of evil; for this is idleness, and idleness is a part of evil; rather, not a part, but the foundation and root of wickedness; for idleness has taught all evil...For to not do good is to do evil…. Because of this, the blessed Paul, too, leading us from wickedness, leads us towards virtue. For what is the use, tell me, of cutting away all the thorns, if you do not plant good seeds? For, the toil remaining incomplete, it turns again to our loss….He who does not weep does not, because of that, laugh, but he is in a middle state. So, too, here, he who is not bitter is not thereby good, nor he who is not wrathful thereby compassionate; but another effort is needed so that we might obtain the good. ...

"Olivet, Olivet!  Where heaven robbed us And stole our Christ, and sailed Him to the sky!" His cloudy chariots snatched Him from us in a whirlwind of glory, and the Apostles were left, like Elisha, bereft—yet, like Elisha, they were to receive a mantle, and a double portion of glory. As Christ "suspended" His glory during His lifetime, and suspended His "place of glory" before the Ascension, so, too, the glory of the Apostles is suspended.  It is the shortest suspension of these: a mere ten days, compared to the forty days of the Ascension, the thirty-three years of Christ's life, or the many decades of Mary Magdalene's .  Yet it is a suspension, and painful one, nonetheless, that wait until they would "receive power, the Holy Spirit coming upon" them (Acts 1:8). In those ten days, when they were "packed and shuttered...in utter beggary, / Behind the thin doors of the Cenacle," perhaps, once again, with the "doors locked f...