NOTE: — 72 —

[If they] estrange themselves from her breasts and from spiritual nourishment, from the Holy Scriptures (which are the breasts of the Church), and do not with yearning and longing hasten unto her and feed upon the Scriptures, they cannot live, but die the immortal death. Foreseeing these things, the Prophet also lamenteth, saying: “The wicked are estranged from the womb; they went astray from the belly, speaking lies” [Ps. 58:3]; that is to say, the confession and the covenant which they covenanted at the font of [re]birth—to love God the Father and the Mother Church—they have belied and become estranged. And finding them outside the Mother—that is, outside the Church—Satan taketh them captive and leadeth them away, like slave-dealers who steal children whom they find far away from their parents” (*From the Commentary on the Song of Songs*). Lo, in agreement with these words writeth also the great Khosrov, Bishop of Andzewats‘ik‘: “Yet woe is me, woe unto this present time, wherein, according to the Prophet’s foretelling, we have become estranged from this Mother, and have alienated ourselves from so many gifts; for even if we had no other transgression, this alone were sufficient to make us sinners. For here too the Prophet, not on account of any other thing, but on account of our estrangement from this spiritual Mother, called [them sinners]: ‘The sinners,’ he saith, ‘are estranged from the womb; they went astray from the belly,’ that is, from the font. For those estranged from the Church fall away from grace, and are hated as step-children because of their contempt for her” (*From the Commentary on the Breviary [Zhamagirk‘], page 79*).