Jerome : "Through slothfulness the ceiling sags, and through idleness of the hands the house leaks." Our house, which is held up by the condition of mankind, even that abode that we have in heaven, sags if we are lazy and slow to do good work. And every ceiling, which is supposed to hold the roof up high, falls to the ground and crushes its inhabitants. And when the help of hands and virtues has eventually gone numb a great storm of all tempests and rain clouds will fall down upon us from above. More precisely, although we have interpreted this with regard to one man, it can be better understood with bearing to the Church, because its stature is brought down by the neglect of its principate. There in the Church we find the attractions of sins, where the roof is said to be virtue. — Commentary on Ecclesiastes John Cassian : But we must not imagine that anyone slips and comes to grief by a sudden fall, but that he falls by a hopeless collapse either from being deceived by beginning his training badly, or from the good qualities of his soul failing through a long course of carelessness of mind, and so his faults gaining ground upon him little by little. For "loss goeth before destruction, and an evil thought before a fall," just as no house ever falls to the ground by a sudden collapse, but only when there is some flaw of long standing in the foundation, or when by long continued neglect of its inmates, what was at first only a little drip finds its way through, and so the protecting walls are by degrees ruined, and in consequence of long standing neglect the gap becomes larger, and breaks away, and in time the drenching storm and rain pours in like a river: for "by slothfulness a building is cast down, and through the weakness of hands the house shall drop through." — CONFERENCE 6:17 John Damascene : But as long as we are among the living, while the foundation of our true faith continues unshattered, even if somewhat of the outer roofwork or inner building be disabled, it is allowed to renew by repentance the part rotted by sins. — BARLAAM AND JOSEPH 11:94