Lot's wife; the cave in the rock

Cyril went on: 'For I have admired your face,' he says, 'of not overthrowing the city about which you spoke.' For the way of life that does not have itself perfectly toward virtue is in truth unwanted by God, and being overcome by the passions in anything at all is rejectable to him and not far from condemnation. Yet from love of men he permits, and having measured to the nature what is reachable at the start, he commands that they be saved, even those still practicing the good, and not yet wholly stepping through the blameable training. But even for those who have come to these measures, and drive into this condition, the running-in would not come without the divine light and the torch-bearing from above. 'For the sun rose,' it says, 'and Lot entered into Zoar.'

Palladius said: How very much you have said what is likely!

Cyril: So then divine Lot ran in into the city still small, God permitting him; but the woman who followed him and ran out with him was also convicted as weak toward this. 'For she looked,' it says, 'behind, and she became a pillar of salt.' And see that the firm mind and the youthful spirit, even if it should not arrive perfectly, perhaps, at what pleases God, having begun to accomplish virtue, still makes habits of passions little by little toward what has itself better. But the weak and cowardly, whose sign is the woman, is wholly made useless by the turnings-about into a cheap and low life. For this, I think, is what becoming a pillar of salt shows; which would be a symbol of a mind withered, and of a mind laid to go over toward silliness, and having already somehow driven on into a last insensibility. And salt that has been made foolish will no longer be strong for anything, the Savior himself also said; and it will be made wholly useless, sent outside, and thrown under men's feet. So the woman was turned to stone, and not long after Lot added what was lacking. For it is written that 'Lot went up from Zoar, and sat in the mountain, he and his two daughters with him. For they feared to live in Zoar, and they lived in the cave, he and his two daughters with him.' For the mind goes forward as by steps upon what has itself completely, and springs up little by little toward what was at the beginning, not being suitably able, nor very sufficiently. And it goes forward and goes up toward the better, being tented by prudence and spiritual courage as by some daughters of its own, and having left below the pleasure-loving and cowardly, of which the woman is toward a type. And it lives thereafter as on a mountain and in a cave; the mountain showing us well the high and lifted-up toward the spiritual good condition, and the cave the fixed and seated character of the remaining in virtue. For it is written thus about good men: 'He who walks in righteousness, speaking a straight road, hating lawlessness and injustice, and shaking his hands from gifts, making his ears heavy that he may not hear a judgment of blood, shutting his eyes that he may not see injustice, this one shall live in a high cave of a strong rock.' And the word upon this would also be for us not unconvincing in another way. For the rock is Christ, because of the strength and unhurt nature of the highest of all beings. And the cave in Christ would be understood as the Church, the lodging of the holy ones, the shelter of those who are pious, which the righteous inhabit, and also as many as refuse the penalty through fire.