Do you perceive now how God plants and where He plants? He does not plant in the valleys, but on the mountains in high and lofty places. He does not wish to place again in lowly places those whom He led out of Egypt, whom He led from the world of faith, but He wishes their mode of life to be uplifted. He wishes us to dwell in the mountains, but also in these very mountains, no less does He not wish us to crawl all over the ground, nor does He wish further that His vine have its fruit cast down to the ground, but He wishes its shoots to be led upwards, to be placed aloft. He wishes that there be vine branches and vine branches not in just any lowly trees, but in the loftiest and highest cedars of God. I think the ‘cedars of God’ are the prophets and apostles. If we are joined to them as the vine which ‘God brought out of Egypt’ and our shots are spread among their branches and, resting on them, we become like vine branches bound to one another by bonds of love, we shall doubtless produce very much fruit. For ‘every tree therefore which bringeth not forth fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire’ (Lk 3:9). ~ Origen. Homily VII on Exodus. (Psalm 79)

The Exodus serves for many a Father to consider the relationship between pagan learning and God’s people. St. Augustine, for example, has the people appropriating all the “treasures of the Egyptians” as they leave. Origen connects the Exodus with a replanting of the vine (the People) up in the mountains, not in the “lowly valleys”. As one might expect, Origen strives up, up, up — out, up and away. The air is rarefied up there! I do like the prophets and apostles as the ‘loftiest and highest cedars of God’. Not only do they grow high, they are tremendously rooted — sturdy, thick. I also like the vine branches growing together, “bound to one another by bonds of love” and “producing much fruit” thereby: growth in loving community again.