{"author":null,"canonical_references":[],"database_sha256":"8cfbe7284c6936871d57c02dc6aa63ebbdfd4722422d539dd9f716e46e91112e","date_end":null,"date_start":null,"edition_year":null,"id":"sermonindex-ecf-5750","native_reference":{"book_number":10,"chapter_from":19,"chapter_to":19,"system":"MyBible module coordinates (mapping unverified)","verse_from":17,"verse_to":17},"public_import_allowed":false,"record_kind":"verse-keyed-module-record","review_required":["English edition and exact text","author/work attribution","dating","verse mapping and citation kind","reuse and attribution","split author quotations and deduplicate"],"review_status":"unreviewed","source_html":"<p><b>Origen of Alexandria</b>: The angels sent for the overthrow of Sodom, though they were eager to hasten the business enjoined upon them, first take care of Lot their host, so that out of regard for his hospitality they might rescue him from the impending destruction by fire. Hear this, you who shut your houses against strangers; hear this, you who shun a guest as though he were an enemy. Lot dwelt in Sodom. We do not read of other good deeds of his; his hospitality alone, arising from habitual practice, is recorded. He escapes the fires, he escapes the flames, for this reason alone, that he threw open his house to guests. The angels entered a hospitable house; the fire entered the houses shut against guests. Let us see, then, what the angels say to their host in return for the offices of hospitality. \"On the mountain,\" he says, \"save your soul, lest perhaps you be caught.\" Lot was indeed hospitable, and, as Scripture bore witness to him, he escaped destruction by receiving the angels into his lodging. But he was not so perfect that, upon coming out of Sodom, he could at once ascend the mountain; for it belongs to the perfect to say: \"I have lifted up my eyes to the mountains, from whence shall come my help.\" This man, therefore, was neither such a one as ought to perish among the Sodomites, nor was he so great that he could dwell with Abraham in the loftier places. For if he had been such, Abraham would never have said to him: \"If you go to the right, I will go to the left, or if you go to the left, I will go to the right,\" nor would the dwellings of Sodom have pleased him. He was, therefore, a kind of middle sort between the perfect and the lost. And knowing that it was not suited to his strength to ascend the mountain, he devoutly and humbly excuses himself, saying: \"I cannot be saved on the mountain, but behold this city is small, here I shall be saved, and it is not small.\" And having entered Segor, the small city, he is saved in it. And after this he ascended into the mountain with his daughters. For he could not have ascended into the mountain from Sodom, although it is written of the land of Sodom, before it was overthrown, at the time when Lot chose it for his dwelling, that it \"was like the paradise of God and like the land of Egypt.\" And yet — to make use of a small digression — what likeness can there seem to be between the paradise of God and the land of Egypt, that Sodom should be compared equally to both? But I think this: that before Sodom sinned, while it still kept the simplicity of an uncontaminated life, it was \"like the paradise of God\"; but when it began to be discolored and darkened by the stains of sins, it became \"like the land of Egypt.\" But we also inquire into this: since indeed the prophet says that \"your sister Sodom shall be restored to her former state,\" whether her restoration also admits of this, that she be \"like the paradise of God,\" or only \"like the land of Egypt.\" For my part I doubt whether the sins of Sodom can be boiled down so far and her crimes purged to such a degree that their restoration be so great as to be compared not only to the land of Egypt but even to the paradise of God. Yet those who wish to affirm this will press us, chiefly from that phrase which seems to be added to this promise; for he did not say \"Sodom shall be restored\" and stop there, but he said: \"Sodom shall be restored to her former state.\" And they will maintain that her former state was not \"like the land of Egypt,\" but \"like the paradise of God.\"<br/><i>— HOMILIES ON Genesis 5.1</i></p><p><b>Origen of Alexandria</b>: For as it was in the days of Noah, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as they were in the days before the flood, eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until Noah entered into the ark, and they knew not until the flood came and took them all away, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.</p><p>For those who understand the plain text of the present words, whether they wish to understand it spiritually or simply, it is consistent to say concerning the consummation of this world that \"it shall come suddenly,\" like one who has already fallen sick beforehand with a sickness fit to make manifest his coming corruption. For this is shown especially from what he says, that the coming of the Son of man will be like the days of Noah; for then all things that were upon the earth suddenly perished. But whoever wishes to say that the consummation of the world will happen gradually will say that likewise it happened in the days of Noah. For with the rain descending for forty days and forty nights, it followed that those first perished who dwelt in the lower parts of the earth, and after them those who dwelt somewhat in the higher parts, and thus last of all those who dwelt in the highest mountains. So too (he says) in the consummation of the world, when the fire has descended, it will indeed begin from the more elevated places and gradually descend to the lower. But Luke, subjoining also the similitude of the fire of Sodom, gives us occasion to understand that the consummation is to come suddenly. But someone will say that by this it is declared that that rain, or that fire, did not happen according to the order of nature, but on account of the abundance of the sins of men.</p><p>In two ways, then, is the coming corruption of the world reckoned: in one way according to a natural descent of fire, in another according to the judgment of God. But the Gentiles do not say that those sins were the burning, or the cause of that burning, but that it was the power of fire. The divine discourses, however, teach that all things are held and governed by God, and they do not blame the violence of fire, but proclaim it the will of God — of God who saves upon the earth those who are worthy of salvation in it, but destroys those in whom, on account of the abundance of iniquity, \"charity grows cold.\" For the comparison with the fire of Sodom teaches most manifestly that the corruption of the world will be sudden. This is clear from what the angel said to Lot: \"behold, I have admired your face in this word, that I will not destroy the city of which you have spoken; hasten therefore to be saved there; for I cannot do anything until you go thither.\" You see that that fire which was sent upon Sodom was held back by the divine will, until Lot entered into Zoar. So I think it will be also in the consummation (according as Lot too was saved), that then that fire of the consummation will lay hold of the world according to the judgment of God, when the saved righteous shall shine \"as the sun in the kingdom of their Father\": then \"they will gather the wicked out of the kingdom of Christ and cast them into the furnace of fire.\"</p><p>For how is it not manifest that the corruption of the world will be sudden, from what he says: they will be eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, which are signs of peace and security? For famines and pestilences will perhaps be some time before the consummation; but around the consummation itself there will be neither famine nor war. And how are eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, planting and building, buying and selling to be understood, unless it is so ordered? But this too makes it manifest, what the Apostle says: \"that the day of the Lord shall so come as a thief in the night. When they shall say: peace and security, then sudden destruction shall come upon them, as the pain of childbirth upon her that is with child, and they shall not escape\"; for he teaches us that the day of consummation will come upon men suddenly and unexpectedly, when the state of things shall seem to have been turned as it were for the better — from the former famine to abundance, from pestilence and battles to peace and security.</p><p>But those who hear the Gospel more deeply and do all things so that the Gospel may be in no part at all veiled to them, do not much care about the general consummation of the age, whether it is to be sudden and general or by parts; but they consider only this, that the consummation of each single person happens without his knowing either the day or the hour of his own departure, and that upon each one of us \"the day of the Lord will so come as a thief.\" On which account it is needful to watch, whether in the evening (that is, in youth) or at midnight (that is, in the midst of dark human life) or at cockcrow (when one is now older) or in the morning (when one is now in advanced old age), so that when God the Word comes bringing the consummation of the setting-out of this life, he may be found who did not give \"sleep to his eyes\" nor \"slumber to his eyelids,\" and who kept the commandment of him who says: \"watch at all times.\" Yet all are vain, whether those who profess to know the consummation of the world, when it will be, or those who boast that they know the end of their own life, seduced either by the signs of birds or by ventriloquists or by magicians, and thinking to know the day and hour of their own departure. For as it is, no one can know, unless perhaps he be some prophet illumined by the Holy Spirit — like him who prophesied to the king's wife who wished to know whether her son would rise from his infirmity, and like Elijah who prophesied to Ahaziah, saying what had been determined for him by the Lord: \"thus says the Lord: because there was no God in Israel, do you go to seek unto Baal the fly, the god of Ekron? not so; the bed upon which you have gone up, you shall not come down from it, for you shall surely die.\"</p><p>These things, even though we have said them in a digression, we have nevertheless introduced as useful, since concerning the consummation of each single person also (that is, concerning the day of his departure) no one can know — although many profess to know such things — except perhaps those who have heard from the prophets. I know also another consummation of the righteous man, who with apostolic advancement can say: \"but far be it from me to glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world.\" For to him to whom the world is crucified, for him in a certain way the consummation of the world has already come; and he who is dead to worldly things, to him (having passed over days not of the Lord) there comes the day of the Lord, on which the coming of the Son of man takes place upon his soul, because he now no longer lives to sin and to the world.<br/><i>— COMMENTARY ON Matthew 56</i></p>","source_html_sha256":"30e31ff51904ca928b2d827406ff3623ec41055593e5fc58a53a7d3d48fe49b6","source_module":"ECF","source_row_id":5750,"source_url":"https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/ecf/","text_sha256":"cbe57a3cf7944f84e20939ece819f0ec5a975b50f8e0edb4237795e420fb670d","translator":null,"work":null}