Woe to the soul without Christ dwelling in it
From a homily attributed to Saint Macarius, bishop (d. c. 330)
Woe to the soul that does not have Christ dwelling in it
In times past there were false prophets among God’s people, and among you also there will be false teachers who will smuggle in pernicious heresies. They will go so far as to deny the Master who acquired them for his own, thereby bringing on themselves swift disaster. The lustful ways will lure many away. Through them, the true way will be made subject to contempt.
They will deceive you with fabricated tales, in a spirit of greed. Their condemnation has not lain idle all this time, however; their destruction is not asleep. Did God spare even the angels who sinned? He did not! He held them captive in Tartarus – consigned them to pits of darkness, to be guarded until judgment. Nor did he spare the ancient world – even though he preserved Noah as a preacher of holiness, with seven others, when he brought down the flood on that godless earth. He blanketed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in ashes and condemned them to destruction, thereby showing what would happen in the future to the godless.
He did deliver Lot, however, a just man oppressed by the conduct of men unprincipled in their lusts. (Day after day that just one, good as he was, felt himself tormented by seeing and hearing about the lawless deeds of those among whom he lived.) The Lord, indeed, knows how to rescue devout men from trial, and how to continue the punishment of the wicked up to the day of judgment.
Source: The Liturgy of the Hours – Office of Readings
Saint Macarius (d. c. 330) was named bishop of Jerusalem in 314. He fought the Arian heresy and was one of the signers of the decrees of the Council of Nicaea. He is said he was with Saint Helena when she found three crosses and was the one who suggested that a seriously ill woman be touched with each of the crosses; when one of them instantly cured her it was proclaimed the True Cross. Macarius was commissioned by Constantine to build a church over Christ’s sepulcher and supervised the building of the basilica that was consecrated on September 13, 244. He died soon after.