Jeremiah 38:5

They have Lazarus in Moses and the prophets. Moses was Lazarus; he was a poor man. He was naked. He esteemed the poverty of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Pharaoh. They also have the prophets. They have Jeremiah, who is thrown into a cistern of mud and who fed on the bread of tribulation. They have all the prophets. Let them hear them. Every day Moses and the prophets are preaching against your five brothers. Let them teach them. Let them instruct them. Let them summon the eye. What do they say to it? Do not look on the carnal, but discern the spiritual. "What we have seen with our eyes," says the apostle, "what we have heard, what our hands have handled: of the Word of God." He instructs the ear, too, the sense of smell, of taste. All the prophets and all the saints teach these brothers.

Why am I making such a point of all this? Because a monk should not look at the crowd of sinners but reflect on the way of life and the fewness of the saints. The whole of Judea was led into captivity. Nebuchadnezzar had come, and thousands of people were displaced into Babylonia as prisoners. Jeremiah alone was left praising God, and they threw him into a muddy cistern; nevertheless, the soul of this one man was more precious than that of all the people. Would you know what one person can do? Jesus, son of Nave, was alone, although the whole world was inhabited. There were, to be sure, countless multitudes, but he was alone. Alone he commanded the sun and the moon, and they stood still. A man gives an order, and heaven gives heed. Heaven listened to him because he was listening to the Lord. Jeremiah was in captivity, but there were also with him great numbers of exiles. What does he say? "I sat alone, because you filled me with indignation." How were you alone in the city? I say, I was alone because I had no one with whom to share my purpose.

How am I distressed, think you, when I call to mind that on the festival days the multitudes assembled resemble the broad expanse of the sea, but now not even the smallest part of that multitude is gathered together here? Where are they now who oppress us with their presence on the feast days?… Now if they make the summer season their excuse: for I hear of their saying things of this kind, "the present stifling heat is excessive, the scorching sun is intolerable, we cannot bear being trampled and crushed in the crowd, and to be steaming all over with perspiration and oppressed by the heat and confined space:"… What then am I to say to those who advance these pretexts? I would remind them of the three children in the furnace and the flame, who when they saw the fire encircling them on all sides, enveloping their mouth and their eyes and even their breath, did not cease singing that sacred and mystical hymn to God, in company with the universe, but standing in the midst to the pyre sent up their song of praise to the common Lord of all with greater cheerfulness than they who abide in some flowery field: and together with these three children I should think it proper to remind them also of the lions which were in Babylon, and of Daniel and the den: and not of this one only but also of another den, and the prophet Jeremiah, and the mire in which he was smothered up to the neck.