“Jesus, seeing the crowds, went up into a mountain.” If only we could sometimes do the same; see the crowds, dismiss them, and then “place ascending steps in our hearts”! But it is difficult in a crowd to see the crowd. Inevitably there is some confusion in a crowd and confusion makes clear vision and discernment and sound judgment impossible. The crowd must be sent away if it is to be seen and judged. And anyone who really sees the crowd has no further time for it, he longs to escape and gladly sends it away … a man who has scarcely got above the level of the crowd, has not yet seen the crowd. Furthermore, if he has never known the silence of solitude, he will not hear the crowd’s clamor, he will not realize the commotion it is making.

My Lord Jesus and perhaps he alone, could be in a crowd and yet be undisturbed by it and so could see it. Yet he, “when he saw” it, dismissed it, and “withdrew” “into a mountain”, where it could not follow him. How sad it is, brothers, that many nowadays resolve to leave the crowds yet settle down where they are certain to be found by them again. Then they are even more harassed than before and the “final” disturbance from the crowd “is worse than the first”.

So, brother, “escape far away” do not run back to the crowd but “stay in solitude”, “follow” Jesus, climb the mountain, tell the crowd: “Where I am going, you cannot come.” Although the literal sense, beloved, makes reference to an earthly mountain and an exterior crowd, it is upon the allegorical sense that I wish to focus attention, especially upon that which will most teach us how to live and “build” us “up on the one foundation”.

For though it is difficult, if not impossible, that a real crowd should be without accompanying clamor, yet with still greater reason do I distrust that interior crowd, so to speak, which is all the more troublesome as it is inward. So, “because of this” crowd, “climb high”, follow Jesus. He has descended into you, so that you, after him and through him, may ascend above yourself, even up to him who is within you.

– Isaac of Stella, Sermon One – For the Feast of All Saints  –