Ascend Lord’s house clean; eject leper/flux/soul-unclean from camp

Cyril: …ting would be most of all for those who would choose to live rightly, and the altogether well-fitting of the citizenship in Christ, as a kind of crown to bind upon their own heads, to urge one another headlong as it were saying: ‘Come, and let us go up unto the mountain of Lord, and unto the house of the God of Jacob, and he will announce to us his way, and we will walk in it;’ (Isaiah 2:3) when also some having received the thus well-famed and benefit-bearing voice, all but also leap up saying: ‘I was gladdened upon those having said to me: Unto a house of Lord we will go.’ (Psalm 122:1) So then, O Palladius, for those hastening to go unto a house of God, of what sort would the aim be and the mind for them wherever then it would look, and what longing to set upright, they go unto the sacred and divine tent?

Palladius: And indeed, O companion, the matter is not unclear; for it has been written, that ‘Worship the Lord in his holy court;’ (Psalm 96:9) and ‘Lift sacrifices, and go into his courts.’ (Psalm 96:8)

Cyril: So then bringing forward the sacrifices over themselves, clear that the spiritual ones, and indeed also about to approach according to intelligible worship, some go into the house of Lord and into his courts.

Palladius: Thus I say.

Cyril: So then shall we think those willing to frequent-in, must dart through simply, not having been washed-out as to the sin, not having been freed from abomination, not having been scraped-off as it were of the filth of flesh-love, but having the mind melted-in, and having a rusted heart? Least at least, but rather having been brightened with the brightness in Christ, and gleaming-through the all-variegated beauty of the most God-loving virtue.

Palladius: Very much so; for I at least say one must go according to eyes of Lord, with every stain of our thoughts having been rubbed-out beforehand.

Cyril: You spoke rightly, since at least he also makes the sick one hated, and indeed also rejectable, and sends out from the multitude of the holy ones. Which also the all-divine Paul writing understands very well: ‘So then lift out the evil one from yourselves.’ (1 Corinthians 5:13) And I would not say the matter a fruit of wildness of customs, but a wise finding of safety. ‘For a little leaven,’ (Numbers 5:1–4) he says, ‘leavens the whole lump.’ This again also a sacred law was under-forming for us riddlingly. For it has been written in the Numbers: ‘And the Lord spoke toward Moses, saying: Speak to the sons of Israel, and let them send out from the camp every leper and every flux-flowing, and every unclean upon soul, from male unto female, send out outside the camp, and they will not defile their camps in which I lodge in them. And the sons of Israel did thus.’ (1 Corinthians 5:6) So then is it not true to say that very hard-to-bear and truly hard-to-carry is the burden of the law? For you understand how also upon unwilling sicknesses he writes-down a judgment, and yet