Leprosy and the white patch: first the plain sense, then the spiritual

Cyril: …it is leprosy.’ (Leviticus 13:8) The matter, Palladius, turns on fine distinctions, and the account of these things is not easy to grasp. Yet I think I must gather my mind and say in a few words what the law means to show. But first I will explain how the conditions differ. Leprosy is a most grievous disease of human bodies, hard to escape and devouring, and it comes about by a deadening. The sore is hollowed out at once, as the skin is consumed and keeps sinking deeper, since the corruption always creeps downward. That, I think, is why the hair growing on those places withers and turns white, and like a plant it perishes along with the soil beneath it. Such, then, is leprosy. The white patch, on the other hand, is a bodily ailment that resembles leprosy, except that it does not drive the harm deep or send the feeling of the disease into the parts within. It floats, as it were, on the surface and barely blooms on the body. It does not turn the hair white, nor does it spread beyond control; with very few remedies it is easily reined in, and the flesh where it broke out returns to health. So leprosy is an undoubted deadness, while the white patch raises some suspicion of leprosy but is not in truth the same thing, that is, leprosy and deadness. The law therefore condemns the leper as unclean, since he has already suffered deadness; but it acquits of the charge the one sick with the white patch, since he has come under suspicion of leprosy but is not actually leprous. This is why it says that if there is a scar with a mark, and a leprous sore, and the skin looks hollowed, and the hair also changes to white, dying, it may be, together with the flesh beneath it, then it will certainly be leprosy (Leviticus 13:2–3); for the deadness creeps deep. But if there is a white patch with a mark, without any hollowing of the skin and without the hair changing to white, let it be tested, it says, by the priest, and let the man be set apart a second time (Leviticus 13:4–5). For it is not unlikely that the passing of the days itself, putting the ailment to the test, may sometimes show the exact truth to those who examine it. In one case the hair takes on another color as the skin hollows, and the white patch has turned into leprosy. But if none of these things has happened, ‘let him be released,’ it says, ‘from the charge’ (Leviticus 13:6). For the condition is not leprosy, but something that resembles leprosy and comes very close to it, namely the white patch. The plain sense, then, and the explanation of the matter have been set out well enough. But come, let us speak of the spiritual meaning and lay hold of the ideas that are hidden and grasped by the mind.

Palladius: How fine and helpful that is!

Cyril: We who are being made alive in Christ (and by making alive I mean the spiritual kind) must depart from dead works (Hebrews 9:14) and go as far from them as we can. These, I think, would be the works through which the soul is put to death and the mind grows cold, when it has turned without restraint toward the things of the flesh and of the world. For if it is true that ‘the one who sows to the flesh will reap corruption from the flesh’ (Galatians 6:8), and that those who live according to the flesh…