In all religions, mountains had been regarded as a link between heaven and earth: the center and image of the world, a place where the deity was met, where this world was left for his, the natural site of the temple to which he descended, and at which union with him took place. The place where all this happens is a holy mountain. This symbolism and this reality occur in the Bible, where the New Testament takes up the images and ideas of the Old, particularly the “favored mounts” where God revealed himself, to Moses, to Elijah and to Elisha, and those hills on whose summit a cult was practiced in his honor, where he was worshiped and sacrifice was offered to him. Jerusalem with her Temple was to be the mountain par excellence. In the Gospels and apostolic writings, she has a symbolic or geographical significance—sometimes both. Elevation, height, is the sign of a sublime mystery, of God made manifest and of his dwelling among men, and of the fulfillment of the prophetic utterances.
JEAN LECLERCQ Aspects of Monasticism