Borrowed Radiance

Maximos Pafilis, Bishop of Melitene (translation from the original Greek text)

Homily on the Gospel according to Matthew 5:14-19

In the catacombs there were no chandeliers. Only an oil lamp, thrust into a niche dug in the tufa, and faces all around smelling of damp, bread, death. That was all. And yet, no one knows how, that feeble light ascended to the surface of the empire and troubled its sleep. With torches the persecutors sought it, and did not find it, because it burned within men. Three centuries this paradox lasted, years of blood, and then indeed, beneath the sandals of the heathens, without temple, without title, within the earth the Church was established, as never since.

Afterwards, we came out of the holes. We blinked our eyes in the sun and the first thing we thought was to build radiant temples and mosaics and domes that vied with the sky, and beside them courts, dignities, protocols. We embraced tightly, naturally, almost divinely ordained, with power. She clothed us in purple, we lent her tranquillity. Like a silken blanket, heavy, the Byzantine magnificence spread over the Christian communities, while underneath the secular poisoning worked silently,…