The Abundance of Spiritual Fruitfulness

“Clothe the naked, take in the poor homeless into your house. For then, he says, your light will break forth early (Isa 58:8), and your healing will quickly rise up (Isa 58:8).”

To those who fasted and cut fasts in the fifths and sevenths not as was fitting, the Lord says: “Behold, seventy years you have spent in Babylon, having been carried away in it by the law of captivity (Jer 29:10); not the fast that I accept you fasted for me, but eating and drinking your own pleasant things, doing nothing according to the words in the hands of the prophets before, when Jerusalem was being inhabited and prospering, and the cities of Judah around her, of which she is the metropolis, and the mountain and the plain were being inhabited?”

For how would the metropolis not have prospered with the cities under it, and the mountain and the plain inhabited around it, bringing deep peace and being ruled with the right law, having driven far away every war and enemy? Thus, regarding Jerusalem and the cities around her making peace and having much stability, there was abundant prosperity while the plain and the mountain land were being inhabited.

It happens for such places to be inhabited when there is much fruitfulness and prosperity, for men to dwell able to live well in the mountain, the planting of trees being full of oaks, and the plain bringing wheat and barley and the other crops. For in places multiplying, a multitude of men loves to dwell, some indeed farming, others enjoying the abundance.

Jerusalem being inhabited and prospering, and the cities around her, the Church finds this by analogy, and the orthodox views; of which the mountain, producing fruits, is the doctrines of piety and of the orthodox faith, having much abundance of products in the moral instruction in the low plain.

Concerning such a spiritual prosperity in the fourth...

And it is brought forward by the sixty-fifth Psalm: 'You have visited the earth and made it drunk, you have filled it to make it prosperous. You have made its channels drunk, you have multiplied its generations; in its drops it shall be glad, rising up. You shall bless the crown of the year with your goodness, and the plains and all that is in them shall rejoice. The mountains of the wilderness shall be soaked, and the hills shall rejoice and be girded. The rams of the flocks have entered, and the valleys are filled with grain; for they have cried out and shall sing.' (Psalm 65:9-13).

Since this abundance and all-fruitfulness is of a spiritual nature, how could the mountains and the plains not be inhabited by men, along with the true word which makes them so, to the point that they might cry out and sing thankfully to the God who has granted so many things?

And a sign of a painless habitation in the mountains and the plains is that the rams of the flocks have put on fat-footed steps, because the pasture has been made to grow abundantly in the places of the mountains and the plains.

When the longing for this spiritual enjoyment of prosperity enters, let him listen to the words given by God into the hands of the prophets, transforming them into actions, so that also from his own practical powers the spring of life may rise up, 'water leaping into eternal life,' by the grace of the Savior who provides all these things.

And it happened that the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, saying: 'Thus says the Lord of hosts: Judge with a righteous judgment, and show mercy and compassion to each one toward his brother, and do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let no one in your heart bear a grudge against his brother.' (Zechariah 7:9-10).

The word of the Lord which came to the prophet, as was said before, announces what the Lord Almighty has commanded, beginning from: 'Judge with a righteous judgment, and mercy and compassion each one...' to those hearing to 'do'...