Festal Letters 1-12

Festal Letter Four

69 FESTAL LETTER FOUR A.D. 416 NCE AGAIN THE season for the holy feast shines upon us, with the contest of endurance getting under way shortly before and commanding us to display holiness of life and every other virtue as a sort of payment of a yearly debt to God, the Lord of all. But there is no exhortation to obedience that is unsuitable to those well-disposed, who seek to gain profit from the subject. For the fruit of good labors is glorious, while there is nothing more grievous than hesitation and idleness; the refusal to endure whatever is necessary to gain what will be of benefit will carry a heavy penalty, and this not in the sense of what concerns ordinary affairs, but what concerns nothing less than the loss of the soul. now since this is the situation as it really is, i think it behooves me above all to address you at this time especially about what is to your benefit, and almost to cry out with the prophet, “Prepare the way of the Lord!”1 i have come before you again, therefore, in the conviction that i would not be an annoyance to the wise, if i should urge that it behooved them to value more highly what they were about, especially at the present time. But if there should be some who think that my discourse is not of the highest quality, even with the great pains i have taken with it, let them beware lest, with their malicious criticism of us, they rank themselves with those who esteem evil, and find themselves unwittingly excluded from the company of the wise. For it can only be a symptom of the worst kind of vice, when one enjoys things which might reasonably provoke rebuke, and considers it bad to be reputed for better things, or even finds it painful to 1. is 40.3; Mk 1.3; Jn 1.23. 70 ST. CYRiL OF ALEXAnDRiA hear them spoken of. As for me, i believe that those who have decided to be serious about living a better life need the consolation and encouragement provided by discourse of the best quality , which can sharpen their eagerness for just this thing.2 Those, by contrast, whose attitude is not what it should be, need to be provided with the medicine suited to correction, and efforts need to be made to see that they become better later on. Our instruction, then, will prove of the greatest profit in both cases, furnishing both kinds of persons with what is due them. 2. it is, then, the choir of prophets that draws us to this proclamation , and persuades us that we must announce the brilliant festival in advance, the prophets who rejoice in the Savior’s achievements and bid us reject completely all thought of silence about them. indeed, they cry out, one of them as follows: “Cry aloud, and spare not; lift up your voice as a trumpet!”3 while another , whose thought and teaching are like the first, says, “Go up on a high mountain, you that bring glad tidings to Zion; lift up your voice with strength, you that bring glad tidings to Jerusalem ; lift it up, fear not!”4 With the removal of anything which could possibly impede our enthusiasm for these matters, therefore , i will proceed to speak of my subject with all due frankness, and, seeing as i do the season of continence hurrying toward us as though from a mountain far off, i will all but signal with my hand to the athletes of piety when i say, “Strip yourselves, lads! Take off the old self!”5 The time of fasting has come to us again, requiring the demonstration of every virtue. in this contest, though, the decision is not given to bodily strength, nor to the leaps on the wrestling floor, and it is not even the one judged superior in these matters who is regarded as capable of victory. “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against 2. Statements like this one extolling the value of rhetorical persuasion are common throughout these letters. See G. Kennedy, Greek Rhetoric Under Christian Emperors (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). 3. is 58.1. 4. is 40.9. 5. Eph 4.22. FESTAL LETTER FOUR 71...