“Jerusalem, my happy home, when shall I come to thee?”

Zeal: The Fourth Lively Virtue

by Anthony Esolen

 Zeal is the spirit that breathes throughout the celebratory Psalms.  “I rejoiced,” says the Psalmist, “when I heard them say, Let us go up to the house of the Lord.”  David is moved by zeal when he dances naked before the Ark of the Covenant.  When Ezra the Scribe reads the book of the law to the Jews returned from captivity, they are at first abashed and crushed with sorrow, but he commands them instead to refresh themselves and to feast with joy.

Zeal reveals to us all the difference between a world grown merely secular and old, and the youthfulness of Christian love. 

Crisis Magazine