Unleavened dough; songs by the willows

Cyril went on: 'For everyone who practices the worthless things hates the light,' according to the Savior's voice. And the dough is carried out unleavened, and they flee without a provision of food. 'For the Egyptians,' it says, 'forced the people, to throw them out from the land in haste. For they said that we all are dying. And the people took up also their dough before the lumps were leavened, their kneadings bound in their garments upon their shoulders.' For I do not think that those who are about to cling to God, and have chosen a kinship toward him, must bring along a remnant of worldly vice, nor provision themselves with others' and unholy foods, clearly the ones of the mind; but they must love to be unleavened breads, the longing thereafter for the one who gives life to the world; for such would feast purely, and, completing the worship worth taking up to God, they remain under him through all.

Palladius said: It is fixed, then, that those who would be both lovers of God and good must as it were reach some holy and sacred land, of the life under Christ and not under a tyrant; and be eager to sacrifice not in the enemies', that is, not being in the sin-loving habit, and not very blameless, but rather in eagernesses toward virtue, and in a condition of habits housed outside the devil's tyranny.

Cyril: Do not suppose it stands in another way than this, my good man; for the word has been made rightly for us. And it is possible, if it seems good, to look at these things also through another image. For when those who lived in the holy city, I mean Jerusalem, dared through the running-away toward anything out of place to grieve the Savior God of all, they came under the hand of the Babylonians, who, having taken them as captives of the spear, commanded them to serve. For it was a necessity to yield to those who ruled, even them not willing. And they, being very much at a loss, and wailing over the unexpected disasters, sought at times at least to find a small consolation of the labor. And this was, to blunt the sharpness of the grief in them by the hymn-singings toward God; 'For I remembered God and was glad,' the divine David said, showing the hymn-singing toward God as a spiritual feast. But it seemed somehow shameful to those who wished to strike up and to fulfill the customary things, to love to put so sweet a sound into the ears of the foreigners, and already as it were to throw into the air the melody most sweet and most clear to themselves, the Babylonians sometimes smiling down, and being wholly burdened at the songs through instruments. That is why they also said: 'By the rivers of Babylon there we sat and wept, when we remembered Zion'; in which, according to the laws and customs of the Jews, the sacrifice of praise was brought with strings and instruments being completed, and charming with the songs those who came to the divine temple. And when they were bound tight in a stranger's yoke of slavery, lamenting they say: 'On the willows in the midst of it we hung our instruments.'