How shall we sing in a strange land

Cyril went on: 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'; marking by this very thing that they were idle in songs. For the willow is a fruitless plant, or rather a fruit-destroying one; for it is said so by the poets among the Greeks. The instruments of song were then laid up toward idleness and fruitlessness; and crying out the occasion of this ease they say: 'How shall we sing the Lord's song on a foreign land?' And when Baruch had carried them Jeremiah's words, 'They all wept,' it says, 'and they fasted and prayed a prayer before the Lord; and they gathered silver, as each one's hand was able; and they sent it to Jerusalem to Joakim son of Hilkiah, son of Shallum the priest, and to the priests and to all the people found with him in Jerusalem.' And after other things: 'And they said: Behold, we have sent silver to you; buy with the silver whole burnt-offerings and for sin, and frankincense, and make manna, and offer it upon the altar of the Lord our God.' For they thought it fitting for themselves no longer to sacrifice, being housed outside a holy land, and acting for the time no longer under God, but yoked as it were to another and having fallen under the tyrannical hand; yet to those who still lived in the holy city, and had obtained the glory of the holy liturgy, they assign the worship, using, clearly, a right reasoning toward the examination of what is fitting and needed. And the most wise Daniel himself also, though he held to holy pursuits, and was a captive together with the others, outwitted the thing of necessity. And in what manner, I will say: for he prayed three times of the day. But the windows in the upper rooms were looking and opened toward Jerusalem for him. For it is written so. For he thought his own prayer would then barely be acceptable with God, if, from a foreign and hated land, he could, if not perhaps in flesh, at least in thoughts be separated, and with the eyes of the mind, looking toward the land most dear to God, and as if having slipped into the temple itself, he might bring the petition for whatever he would choose.

Palladius said: Well indeed, in truth, the whole word has been fitted together for us.