13 Let us not therefore be senseless; but then let us grieve when any one deprives us of our dignity of soul, when we commit sin, when we have offended the common Lord of all; since as regards the things that have now befallen us, so far are they from injuring the city, that if we are watchful, they will greatly benefit us. For even already our city seems to be like a decorous, noble, sober-minded matron. Fear has made her gentler and more dignified, and has delivered her from those miscreants who were concerned in the late audacious deeds.
Let us therefore not give way to womanish lamentations. For I have heard many about the forum saying, “Alas! For you, Antioch! What has befallen you! How are you dishonoured!” Truly when I heard, I smiled at the puerile mind which could give vent to these words! Such words were not becoming now; but when you see men dancing, drunken, singing, blaspheming, swearing, perjuring themselves, and lying, then apply such a saying as this: “Alas! For you, O city, what has befallen you!”
But if you see the forum containing a few meek, modest, and temperate persons, then pronounce the city, “Blessed!” For the fewness will never be able to injure it in any respect, if there be virtue withal; as on the other hand, numbers will never profit it at all, while iniquity is there. “If,” says the prophet, “the number of the sons of Israel be as the sand of the sea, the remnant shall be saved;” that is to say, “Multitude will never prevail with Me.” So also Christ spoke.
He called cities wretched; not because of their littleness, nor because they were not of metropolitan rank. And Jerusalem itself again, He calls wretched for the very same reason, speaking thus; “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem; thou that killest the prophets, and stone them which are sent unto you!” For what advantage, I ask, does a multitude bring, if their system of living be vicious? Nay, on the contrary, even injury results from it. What else, indeed, has wrought the evils which have lately sprung up?
Was it not the sloth, the recklessness, and the depravity of the inhabitants? Did the dignity of the city, did the magnificence of its architecture, or the circumstance that it was a metropolis, do it any service? If with the king who is on earth, nothing could protect it when it had done thus amiss, but all these privileges are taken away; much more with the Lord of angels will its dignity fail to protect it? For at that Day, it will nought avail us, that we have dwelt in a metropolis, that has many spacious porticoes, and other dignities of this kind!
And why do I say, at That Day? For as regards the present life, what can it benefit you that this your city is a metropolis? Pray, has any one restored a distressed family by means of this? Or received any revenue from this dignity? Or dispelled sadness? Or got rid of any bodily infirmity? Or put away a vice of the soul? Beloved! let us not trifle, nor regard the opinions of the multitude, but understand what is indeed the dignity of a city; what it is that makes a city truly a metropolis?
Source: Homilies on the Statues (New Advent)