ACC ~ Acts 20 v9

THE FERVOR OF PAUL’S AUDIENCE. CHRYSOSTOM: Observe, if you please, how crowded the audience was—for the disciples, it says, had gathered together, and what sort of miracle it was. For it was in the window, it says, that [Eutychus] sat, and this at the dead of night. So great was his desire to listen! Let us be ashamed, we who would not do this even during the day. But it was Paul who spoke then, you say. What do you mean? Paul speaks now as well, or rather, it was not Paul either then or now, but Christ, and no one listens. There is no window now, and neither hunger nor sleep troubles us, and still we do not listen. No crowding in a tight place or any other similar discomforts. And the wonderful thing is this: though a young man, he was not indifferent, and though he was being overtaken by sleep, he did not leave, nor was he afraid of the danger of falling. Do not be amazed that [Eutychus] nodded off and fell. For it was not out of indifference that he fell asleep but from necessity of nature. But notice, if you please, that so fervent was their zeal that they were even on the third floor. For not yet did they have a church. HOMILIES ON THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 43.

EUTYCHUS. BEDE: In Hebrew “Eutychus means senseless, while in Greek it means fortunate.” One of these [meanings] fits a person who, through the pleasures of youth, has fallen from the peak of virtues. The other fits a person who, through the loving help of a preacher, has returned to the heights of virtue. COMMENTARY ON THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 20.9A.

EUTYCHUS’S SLOTHFULNESS. ARATOR: Eutychus, alone, banished from the wakeful ones keeping watch, entrusted to a window with limbs sunk in heavy sleep. O rest wrongly won! O hearts always given over to sleep, unprotected by good! How great the disasters he lies open to, whom night alone guards and who never raises his troubled head to better things! He who allows [himself] to fall asleep from God does not know how to be wakeful for danger. Why do you seek the empty chaos of the window, young man, or why are you restful in that place where you will come to disaster? It is a matter harmful for well-being to seek high, hanging [places] and to wish to snatch furtive dreams on a steep couch. ON THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES 2.

Acts