“Strangers with the inhabitants of Tyre.” Where we have alienigenae [foreigners], the Hebrew text has Philistim, which is interpreted, a cup of poison, for heretics are all drunk from the cup of Babylon, of which Jeremiah says, “The golden cup of Babylon that made the whole earth drunk.” Note: “the golden cup of Babylon.” Babylon connotes confusion: “a cup truly golden,” the teachings of philosophers and the eloquence of orators. Who, indeed, has not been misled by the philosophers? Who has not been seduced by the orators of this world? Theirs is a golden cup, the splendor of eloquence on the outside but within full of poison that they could never conceal except under the gleam of gold. You taste the sweetness of their eloquence, to be sure, and do not suspect the fatal poison. “Strangers with the inhabitants of Tyre.” Tyre stands for “narrowness.” Truly, there is no room there, not the wide open heart of Christ, as the apostle says to the Corinthians: “In us there is no lack of room f...
Church people are truly rustic and simple people, but all the heretics are Aristotelian and Platonic. Briefly, that you may know that gold is the usual simile for worldly eloquence, that the heretic’s tongue, for example, is as brilliant as gold, hear the words of the prophet: “Babylon was a golden cup in the hand of the Lord.” Note how he describes the Babylon of confusion. This world, therefore, is that golden cup. All nations drink from that cup of gold. - "Homilies on the Psalms 11"
Indeed, since the sum total of all God’s bounty and the soul of all virtues are given with this ineffable gift, all other gifts are granted us to enable the yearning of the faithful soul to strive effectively after perfect charity. As this is not only from God but is God, it makes steadfast, persevering and unconquerable all those whom it floods with its delight. But people who do not know the sweetness of these waters and still drink of the torrents of this world, people who even after touching with the lips and tasting of the fountain of life still like to get drunk with the golden cup of Babylon, are completely deceived by their own judgment and fall through their own fault. If they persist in this slothfulness, they themselves throw off what they had received. For without charity it is easy to lose all gifts, which same gifts are useless without charity. - "The Call of All Nations 2.11"
