Follow Christ; cloud and tent; Church filled with glory

me.’—that is: If indeed someone should wish to be my disciple, let him come eagerly through the equal sufferings with me, and as it were go and love the same path; for this one will rest together and live together. And this he himself was seeking for us from beside the God and Father, saying: ‘I wish that where I am, there they also may be with me.’ And otherwise we are with Christ, walking upon earth, yet no longer fleshly, but living as citizens spiritually, and being eager to make lodging and rest what seems good to him. You have written in Numbers the type upon this: ‘And on the day,’ it says, ‘in which the tent was stood, the cloud covered the tent, the house of the witness. And the evening was upon the tent as a form of fire until morning; thus it was coming to be continually; the cloud was covering it by day, and a form of fire the night. And when the cloud went up from the tent, after these things the sons of Israel set out; and in the place where the cloud stood, there the sons of Israel were encamping; through the Lord’s command the sons of Israel will encamp, and through the Lord’s command they will set out. All the days in which the cloud overshadows upon the tent, the sons of Israel will encamp; and whenever the cloud is drawn upon the tent more days, the sons of Israel will also keep God’s watch, and will not set out; and it will be whenever the cloud shelters days in number upon the tent, through the Lord’s voice they will encamp, and through the Lord’s command they will set out; and it will be whenever the cloud comes to be from evening until morning, and the cloud goes up in the morning, and they will set out by day or night, and the cloud goes up, they will set out by day, or a month’s days with the cloud’s overshadowing increasing upon it, the sons of Israel will encamp, and will not set out, because through the Lord’s command they will set out. They kept the Lord’s watch through the Lord’s command in Moses’ hand.’ The holy tent having been raised according to the desert, it says the cloud has filled it; then it commanded those from Israel to set out together and settle down together with it, charging them to make the observation of the settings-out up and down with much exactness, and showing from this that the transgression is precarious for those who wish to be slack. Yet these things historically. Let us already contemplate spiritually. For at once both the truest tent has been raised and has risen upon the earth—that is, the Church—it has been filled with Christ’s glory; for the ancient tent’s being covered with the cloud signals, I think somewhere, nothing other than this. Christ therefore has filled the Church with his own glory, and for those spending time in ignorance and wandering, as it were in night and darkness, he shines up in fire’s manner, clearly casting in the intelligible illumination; yet for those already illuminated, and having the intelligible day in heart, granting his own shade and shelter, and fattening them down with spiritual dews—that is, with the consolations from above and through the Spirit.