Tractates on the Gospel of John

²⁵ We have heard, and it is manifest; we had gone out of doors, and we are sent inward. Would I could find, you said, some high and lonely mountain! For I think that, because God is on high, He hears me the rather from a high place. Because you are on a mountain, do you imagine yourself near to God, and that He will quickly hear you, as if calling to Him from the nearest place? He dwells on high, but regards the lowly. “The Lord is near.” To whom? To the high, perhaps? “To them who are contrite of heart.” 'Tis a wonderful thing: He dwells on high, and yet is near to the lowly; “He has regard to lowly things, but lofty things He knows from afar;” He sees the proud afar off, and He is the less near to them the higher they appear to themselves to be. Did you seek a mountain, then? Come down, that you may come near Him. But would you ascend? Ascend, but do not seek a mountain. “The ascents,” it says, “are in his heart, in the valley of weeping.” The valley is humility. Therefore do all within. Even if perhaps you seek some lofty place, some holy place, make yourself a temple for God within time. “For the temple of God is holy, which temple are you.” Would you pray in a temple? Pray in yourself. But be first a temple of God, for He in His temple hears him that prays.

26. “The hour comes, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth. We worship that which we know: ye worship ye know not what; for salvation is of the Jews.” A great thing has He attributed to the Jews; but do not understand Him to mean those spurious Jews. Understand that wall to which another is joined, that they may be joined together, resting on the corner-stone, which is Christ. For there is one wall from the Jews, another from the Gentiles; these walls are far apart, only until they are united in the Corner. Now the aliens were strangers and foreigners from the covenants of God. According to this, it is said, “We worship what we know.” It is said, indeed, in the person of the Jews, but not of all Jews, not of reprobate Jews, but of such as were the apostles, as were the prophets, as were all those saints who sold all their goods, and laid the price of their goods at the apostles' feet. “For God has not rejected His people which He foreknew.”