The People of God and the Inheritance of Judah

The Lord has come and has tabernacled in her midst, the temple having been raised again and God dwelling in it. 'Rejoice and be glad,' says the prophet, 'daughter of Zion.' In many places of the Scripture, the daughter of each city is called, meaning the citizens who fulfill her.

The delight and the gladness which the divine word commands to have is the same as the joy which happens to be the fruit of the Holy Spirit, arranged together with divine love and blessed peace, which the holy Apostle makes manifest writing thus: 'The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace' (Galatians 5:22). Having experienced this stability, those delivered from captivity say: 'When the Lord turned the captivity, we became as those who are returned; then our mouth was filled with joy, and our tongue with shouting' (Psalm 126:1). And in another Psalm it is brought in harmony: 'When the Lord turns the captivity of his people, Jacob shall rejoice and Israel shall be glad' (Psalm 126:3).

For those who mourned, being torn away from their own fatherland by the law of captivity, follow a return to it, to delight and be glad because the Lord has tabernacled in its midst, the cause of the delighting and the gladness. And what is the cause of the gladness and delight—is it the enjoying of the currents of the river filled with waters, about which it is written: 'The river of God was filled with waters,' and also: 'The currents of the river make glad the city of God; God is in its midst, it shall not be moved' (Psalm 46:4-5), no longer departing or abandoning, but because of goodness remaining with it?

And what good and salutary will attach to the indwelling of the Lord in the midst of the beautiful city, or the 'fleeing of many nations' repenting 'unto the Lord in the day' when the sun of righteousness is grasped, of which the patriarch Abraham, having received light, seeing it, rejoiced, and with him the sons and children of him who are according to faith and his works having become, as saying thanks: 'This is the day which the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it' (Psalm 118:24). And the 'many nations having fled unto the Lord' shall receive the people to enrich the one to whom they have fled, no longer atheistic and without hope.

remaining; concerning these things God says in the prophet: 'I will call him who is not my people my people, and he himself will say: Lord my God you are' (Hosea 2:23), so that they may be addressed as 'a holy nation, a holy priesthood, a race of God' (Exodus 19:6).

For he says to those fleeing to God in the same manner as mentioned by him to whom they have fled: 'You shall be to me an elect race, a holy nation, a royal priesthood, my people, through whom I shall display my virtues' (Exodus 19:6).

What then follows for those who have become the people of God, or the dwelling in the midst of the heavenly and blessed Zion? For then then it will be known, by divine and accurate vision, 'that the Lord Almighty sent' (Isaiah 60:22) the one redeeming her, saying concerning his own Father: 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives' (Luke 4:18).

For because of preaching to the poor, Jesus, who dwells in the midst of Zion, was anointed with the Holy Spirit and the power of God, proclaiming release to the captives held by unseen enemies, her children. For thus the All-King, the benefactor of her, will inherit Judah, those who confess. For the confession of Judah is interpreted. And so he will first inherit those called unto salvation; for from of old they were part of him and before that they suffered dispersion and captivity.

But where will he inherit Judah being part of him, except upon the holy land in which he will be long-enduringly well-suffering, he who honors his Father God and his Mother the Church being Jerusalem, whom he still loves, taking again and reigning in her midst, knowing that he has come to dwell in her midst, sent from the Lord Almighty, when bowing heaven he descended to us humans, saying: 'I have descended from heaven to do the will of him who sent me' (John 6:38), 'to seek and to save the lost' (Luke 19:10).

For thus they will no longer remain in perdition, for whom he has come, so that he might become the cause of eternal salvation for them. And the Jerusalem being fulfilled by us as the Church of the living God shall also have such a faith and works making beatitude, so that he who washed and brightened her with his own blood may still love her.