Greedy, cruel and night-loving birds; great and small alike condemned

Cyril: …in wickedness are in some way dark and not plain to all, and they keep the baseness of their character hidden within themselves, out of sight of the many. In those who are sick with the accursed disease of arrogance there always grows up beside it the wish to take advantage of whomever they can, to besiege them with wicked devices of every kind, and so to plunder them, and that insatiably. That is why it adds at once: ‘And the ostrich and the gull’ (Leviticus 11:16). For these, I think, are most insatiable, always gathering up whatever comes their way. Then it says: ‘And the hawk and its kind, the night raven, the cormorant, the ibis, the purple gallinule, the pelican and the swan’ (Leviticus 11:16–18). These too would portray in themselves those who plot cruelly and savagely against others and fasten without restraint on whomever they can, so that they do not shrink even from putting some in danger and fear for their very lives. For the hawk swoops fiercely on every weaker bird; it darts at sparrows, and when it catches them it kills them. The cormorant, the ibis and the purple gallinule, and I would add the pelican too, fall furiously on the fish and make their destruction their food. Such, as far as conduct and savagery of character go, are all who count it as nothing to destroy others for the sake of their own pleasure. They have thrust aside the law of mutual love and offended against the ordinances of love, and it would be altogether fitting for them to hear this, even from us: ‘Do not seek your own interests, but also those of others (Philippians 2:4; 1 Corinthians 10:24); for love,’ it says, ‘does no wrong to a neighbor’ (Romans 13:10). Again, it said that one must refuse the owl, the heron, the plover and their kind, the hoopoe and the bat (Leviticus 11:16–19). These, I think, are lovers of the night. They delight in the darkness and are practiced at taking their flight in it as their sweetest pleasure, but they hate the light of the sun and cannot bear to do anything in it. Such birds would plainly stand for those who work evil. For what Christ said is true: ‘Everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, so that his works may not be exposed; but whoever does the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be made manifest, that they have been done in God’ (John 3:20–21). The winged creeping things too are unclean, those ‘which go,’ it says, ‘on all fours’ (Leviticus 11:20): for example, the various kinds of flies and anything akin to them. These are countless, small and loathsome, and they cannot fly high. We must therefore look closely at the reason why the law came down even to these. For just as, when it made mention of the beasts, it named the camel and then added the hare (Leviticus 11:4–6), declaring all those charged with wickedness equally unclean, whether one were great or small — for, as it is written, there is no partiality with God (Romans 2:11) — so here too it calls to mind the eagle, naming the most kingly of birds, but then comes down again to the very smallest of winged creatures, putting small and great on an equal footing if one is a worker of outrageous deeds, and so cannot escape the condemnation that is his due. Yet it does set apart from this kind…