Call on the Lord; brick and mortar

Cyril went on: 'And Abraham went up from Egypt, he and his wife, and all that was his, and Lot with him, into the wilderness. And Abraham was very rich, with cattle and silver and gold, and he went where he had gone out into the wilderness as far as Bethel, as far as the place where his tent was formerly, between Bethel and between Ai, to the place of the altar which he had made there at the beginning. And Abraham called there on the name of the Lord.' You understand, then, that with those who run up out of worldly incontinence into another holy life, all that is theirs must as it were set out together? For the forefather Abraham ran away from the Egyptians' land with his whole house and whole race, and I would add, with all his gear. For we must leave wholly, and love to shift as with a whole house into the wilderness, that is, into an undisturbed and clean condition of mind, from which also at the beginning man's nature went out, turning aside toward the worse by want of the goods from above. For the descent to strangers would mark this riddlingly, from a land as it were and tent of the things at the beginning and most dear, in which there is also an altar. For running back thus, until we come to be in the place and country of the altar at the beginning, that is, of the sanctification long grown with us, we too call on the God of all, saying that prophetic address: 'Lord, besides you we know no other. We name your name.'

Palladius said: You have spoken most finely.

Cyril: And you may see the thing standing for us in no other way, if you also look well through the things that came to be upon the sons of Israel in their times; whom, when the Egyptians had taken them, a famine having pushed them down at the start, even those holy from above and from the root, and free, yoking them into a bondage unexpected and unpracticed for them, they forced wildly, having composed some such occasion of the cruelty upon them. 'For another king arose,' it says, 'over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. And he said to his race: Behold, the race of the sons of Israel, a great crowd, and it is strong beyond us; come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and, whenever war happens, these too will be added to the opponents, and having warred us out, they will go out from the land.' For it pained, I think, the ruler of the Egyptians' land, that those under a necessary bond, yoked not according to judgment, should even choose at some time to look toward freedom. 'And he set over them,' it says, 'taskmasters of the works, that they might maltreat them from the works, and they built fortified cities for Pharaoh, Pithom and Rameses, and On, which is Heliopolis.' For the fruits of the unbearable greed were the continual endurance of suffering upon clay and brickmaking, and cities towered with walls, and raisings of mounds in the fields, and these were accomplished unpaid and with long sweat for those who labored. For the world-rulers of this age, having taken under hand the wretched souls of men, wear them out in clay and brickmakings and in the things done toward earth and about earth, and having bound them to an evil and profitless trial.