Leviticus/Deuteronomy blessings; spiritual rain; toward neighbor-love

ll safely upon your land, and the war will not pass through your land, and I will give peace in your land, and you will sleep, and there will not be the one frightening you, and I will destroy evil beasts from your land.’ Do you understand of how much care and mildness he counts worthy the fair and most work-loving one, and indeed the one worsted by reverence concerning the law? For both early and late rain, and fruitfulness one upon another, and indeed also fullness of bread, and unstinting use of foods, and besides these he announces he will gift peace. For it is likely that the genuine guard of the law, and an unsated lover of whatever God should wish, be soaked with the unstinting gifts of the heavenly good things; for the spiritual and from-above encouragement, watering like rain a soul of the just as it were a fat and well-bearing earth, gladdens it very much, so as to show an unfailing and as it were all-variegated fruit of piety unto God; and peace crowns, bringing in the remaining unto being well. At any rate Paul also writes: ‘And the peace of God, the one surpassing every mind, will guard your hearts and your thoughts.’ The one then having obtained such munificence from God will continue a warless and peaceable life, the enemy yielding, and every one having stood against falling and going away unto nothing, and a diabolic approach being idle, and every fear going easily out of the way. And this same law we will also find written in Deuteronomy. For he said here having altered a little: ‘And if by hearing you hear all his commandments as many as I command you today, to love the Lord your God, and to serve him from whole heart and from whole soul, and he will give you the rain of your land, according to early and late season, and you will bring in your grain and your wine and your oil, and you will give fodder in your fields for your cattle.’ Therefore then the craftsmanship and good-rhythm, at least unto needing to fulfill whatever God should wish, the meditation of the law will house in our souls. And the desire of the things having been promised shows the sweat upon virtues bearable.

Palladius: Truly; for I would agree, and very reasonably. Yet of the love unto the neighbor, in what manner someone would carry the law through—it is time to say, O friend.

Cyril: One must go then already upon this very thing. And indeed we say, following the sacred Letters, that the Master God of the wholes commanded Moses to assemble the people, and to bring them together very well cleansed and purified under the mountain called Sinai; for he ordered that they must wash the garments, and be seen better than the pleasure unto women, for three days, signifying through the things in sense and seen the intelligible things; for with bright garments as it were—the boasts from virtues—having been made splendid, and excelling with the brightness according to mind, and having been freed from all flesh-loving and earthly pollutions,