The Judgment and the Pattern of Holiness

A courtroom, and the truth was not delayed.

Therefore, arise to me, O blessed Daniel, and now by the word as you were awakened, and then by the Spirit; say also that you are innocent of this blood, just as Pilate later did against the raving Hebrews. Analyze the people upon the criterion; give a beginning to the justice that has been badly completed; set the false judges to be judged; let the order of the protectors be changed, and let the woman observe the elders, just as she herself a little while ago was a spectacle of the city.

Let the captive judge the citizens; the stranger the locals; the youth the old. Use a holy mouth for the Spirit; for you do not have unclean lips, as Isaiah says of himself reviling himself; nor do you need one of the Seraphim or the cleansing coal. Depart wisely from the false judges, so that they may not also leap upon your own questions as a woman leaps in paradise.

For how we may clearly learn the beginning of the words of the thrice-blessed child: Having grown old through days of evil, now your sins, which you did formerly, have come to you, condemning the innocent and releasing the guilty. O the wonder and the great liberty of the Spirit! For where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

See, for it does not even hold back in the preambles; but, piercing into the depth of the conscience and seeing the souls of the elders as filled with sinst seeks neither witness nor proofs; but is insulted and reviled with insolence, because the prophet has the decision written upon his chest.

And as far as it reached him, he would not even have said anything, but he sent them away unreservedly to the punishment; so that he might convince a foolish people and empty judges of the city, who accuse but do not judge according to the truth, and he brings to them the experience of questioning, separated from the truth and the falsehood of the discourse...

Mindful of the response, he exposes; and having brought forth the judgment, he does not give accountability to humans, but calls angels to be tormentors against them. For the dignity of the saints has grown to such an extent that they have invisible powers serving them.

What then happens to the defiled? Judgment was prepared; and they went away, giving the penalty through death for the old lawlessness and the new sin; and all Babylon had the paradox of what was happening through the mouth, and they blasphemed God with hymns, having made public the knowledge of the hidden deeds. And Hezekiah was refreshed rejoicing over the daughter; Joachim made a triumph for the feast of the wife; and twenty-nine children, legitimate and of temperate offspring, smile with faces surrounding the mother, and the much-teared grief was transformed into joy.

You, however, the people of Christ, most pious and soul-benefiting, having heard these histories, do not let the hearing pass by indifferently, but make the word a training and discipline for your own life. Women, emulate Susanna; thus guard toward men the temperance as she did toward herself; she accepted to suffer and to be in danger rather than to defile her life with adultery. Adultery provokes God, shames a man, destroys house and hearth, and works uncertain children. You elders, hate such old men; you rulers, fear the end of the lawless judges.

You young people, imitate the young man, so that in this way every age may be formed into the pattern of beautiful character, so that the whole fullness of the church may become holy and well-pleasing in Christ Jesus our Savior, to whom belong glory, might, and honor, with the co-ruling Father and with His all-holy and life-giving Spirit, now and always and unto the ages of ages. Amen.