29 They Brought Their Sick to Hi be content with general principles of Christian charity. Not Basil. The Mass ends, and the people return to their homes in the swarming city of Caesarea, named for the emperor Augustus on his death in 14 a.d. For the Roman armies had reduced the vast high plateau of Cappadocia to the liberty of a Roman province. To the north, the great River Halys bends on its course to the Black Sea. To the south a great snowy volcanic cone, Mount Argaeus, rises more than a mile and a half above the surrounding country. If you are poor or sick in this land, so much the worse for you. It’s not the honey-sweet land of the Greek isles, near to the swell of the wine-dark sea. It is far inland, brutally hot in summer, icy in winter. The harvests have been poor, and the people are hungry. And the armies of the Arian emperor Valens have been doing bloody work. In that place, at that time, Saint Basil came to a decision. “We need a new city,” he said. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven “Beggars and strangers come from Zeus,” went the old Greek proverb, for the gods would come down to put arrogant men to the test, showing up at their gates with a walking stick and in rags. There was no sense that the poor should be loved. Hospitality is one thing, but love is quite another. Maybe we
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