Praise deferred; virgin courts and temples

there you will find perfection in every good thing, and what stands sound for holiness.

So every word we have trails behind the renown that is already yours, and admits defeat without a blush. It may even deserve pardon if it fears to praise what it cannot reach.

If speech could do what it longs to do, it would stand charged with weakness for delaying. No one should clear that delay by calling it laziness. Why wound people you could have adorned with praise of virtue, by choosing silence instead?

But if speech goes slack, fears, and admits defeat, we will not blame it so much as you — you who are so public that the surpassing weight of your own brave acts has made even the speeches that usually dress everyone look like nothing.

Royal blood has come down to you from long ago, and it still runs, as we believe. Yet look: you also take hold of the kingship in Christ, and you are eager to think and to do what pleases him — shining by works and by a faith without blame, brightening your courts and the emperors’ with the glory of virginity, and raising costly temples to Christ.

He has given this too, with the rest, to your holy souls.

So I will take a word from the holy writings: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your fairness be known to all people.”

It is known, then, and cried abroad even to those throughout