A famine of hearing; Sarah is taken

Cyril said: It shapes for us a very fine contemplation of the things less apparent.

Palladius said: In what manner?

Cyril: Rebuking the Jews' unbelief, God said somewhere: 'Behold, I bring a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst of water, but a famine of hearing the word of the Lord. And they will run from east to west seeking the word of the Lord, and they shall not find it.' Would not then, my friend, those pressed by such a famine, and fallen out of the supply that holds them toward virtue, and not having the foods from heaven and from above, of every necessity make the mind as it were a migrant and a fugitive, chasing thereafter after the more shameful things, and, as if pushed out of a land of its own — the strength toward virtue — go down into another habit and will, no longer the one under God, but rather one laid under the devil's rule? For the father, I think, and king of sin is the first who brought it into the world, whose image and type one might also receive, I think, and with much reason, as Pharaoh, ruling the Egyptians. Among whom the darkness of having wandered was very deep, and no manner of vice was wholly unpracticed.

Palladius: And what was it that pained blessed Abraham from having come, perhaps, into the Egyptians' land?

Cyril: A very great deal. For he was carried a little beyond every evil. And you may learn this easily too, when the holy Writing speaks: 'And it came to pass when Abraham entered into Egypt, the Egyptians saw the woman, that she was very beautiful, and the rulers of Pharaoh saw her, and they praised her to Pharaoh, and they led her into Pharaoh's house.' See then that the woman almost perished for him, my good man.

Palladius: How sharp the thing is, and enough to grieve.

Cyril: And this will happen about us ourselves, in the mind. For those who might slip away from a fatherland, as it were, of their own — the accustomed and most dear good order and virtue — and come toward the worse, and come under the devil's rule, the evil and opposing powers grow upon them and plot terribly in every way and wholly; and if they should see one of those who have come under them able to have an understanding still fair, they are eager to procure him for their own leader, and they carry him under that one's sowings, so that he may no longer bear fruit to God, but rather to Satan. 'For his foods,' according to what is written, 'are choice'; and they soothe, as it were, the mind that has been caught and has slipped, so that, not looking much toward the free, it may not leave the bondage under them. They sometimes procure the pleasures in earthly things, and as it were enrich them with delights toward nothing, just as, of course, the rulers of the Egyptians, when blessed Abraham was losing the woman who lived with him, fawning as it were with honors and with offerings of gifts, wished to carry him far from grieving too much.