verything I have been reading or listening to this past winter seems to have references to Saint Augustine’s The City of God. It is something I have wanted to read for some time, so I have decided to read it this year. I do mean this year, because
- I am a slow reader.
- I don’t have a whole lot of time to devote to this project.
- The book is quite long.
In fact, it may take me considerably longer than just a year.
Throughout the corse of my reading I am going to post some lengthy quotes from The City of God that I find interesting, helpful, or pertinent to our own age. This passage impressed me with that same “pilgrim” quality of Abraham found in Hebrews 11:8-16. Would that we were more like that.
The whole family of God, most high and most true, has therefore a consolation of its own—a consolation which cannot deceive, and which has in it a surer hope than the tottering and falling affairs of earth can afford. They will not refuse the discipline of this temporal life, in which they are schooled for life eternal; nor will they lament their experience of it, for the good things of earth they use as pilgrims who are not detained by them, and its ills either prove or improve them. As for those who insult over them in their trials, and when ills befall them say, “Where is thy God?” we may ask them where their gods are when they suffer the very calamities for the sake of avoiding which they worship their gods, or maintain they ought to be worshipped; for the family of Christ is furnished with its reply: our God is everywhere present, wholly everywhere; not confined to any place. He can be present unperceived, and be absent without moving; when He exposes us to adversities, it is either to prove our perfections or correct our imperfections; and in return for our patient endurance of the sufferings of time, He reserves for us an everlasting reward.
St. Augustine, The City of God; Book First; chapter 29.
