Atos 18

Atos 18:3

Tents can refer to perfect souls, which also is true of the name Israel derived from "seeing God." Now these "tents," says Scripture, are "just like shady groves, like paradises beside streams and like tents that the Lord has pitched." It thus shows that there are other tents that the Lord has pitched, which the tents of Israel resemble. I have to go forth beyond this world in order to see those that are "the tents the Lord has pitched." They, no wonder, are those he showed to Moses when he was building the tent in the desert. The Lord said to him, "Behold, you shall make all according to the model that has been shown to you on the mountain." In imitation of these tents, therefore, Israel must make its tents, and each of us must prepare and build our own tent. In light of this, I do not believe it happened by chance that Peter and Andrew and the sons of Zebedee were fishermen and that Paul was a tentmaker. And as they, summoned from their trade of catching fish, are changed and become fishers of people when the Lord says, "Come, follow me, and I shall make you fishers of men," so too Paul—for he too was called "apostle" through my Lord Jesus Christ—was changed by a similar transformation of his trade so that, just as they were turned from fishermen into fishers of men, so he was moved from making earthly tents to building heavenly tents. He made heavenly tents by teaching each path of salvation and showing the way of the blessed dwellings in the heavens. Paul made tents also by establishing churches when "he proclaimed, in its fullness, the gospel of God from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum." In this way he too made tents in the likeness of the heavenly tents, "which God showed to Moses on the mountain." — HOMILIES ON NUMBERS 17.4.6-7