How the Church Has Changed the World, Volume I

by Anthony Esolen

The world without Easter is doddering. Nothing is solid; all is like a marble and gold façade over a yawning emptiness. With Easter, and, God help us, not some “spirit of Easter,” not some foolish weakling revival of springtime, but the frighteningly real Resurrection of the flesh of Christ, the whole world is made new again. In Christ, even the Greece of Saint Dionysius the Areopagite, Bishop of Athens, lives. Even our own nations now can come to life again. Easter is not one day among the rest. It is the only day.

Saint Basil, the great theologian and Bishop of Cappadocia, founded an enormous complex of buildings and streets just outside of his city of Caesarea for the care of the sick. It was so large, it came to be called the New Town. There were buildings for different kinds of patients, a home for infants, a home for the aged, and a lazaretto for people afflicted with contagious diseases. There were dwellings for physicians and nurses, so they could be always near the people they were treating. There were even workshops and schools where men crippled by disease or injury might learn a trade, to support themselves and their families.