Lent with the Early Church Fathers Day 28

Day 28

Lent with the Early Church Fathers

A daily post from Tom Bandy

Based on A Year with the Church Fathers (Ed. Mike Aquilina, St. Benedict Press, 2010) 

Make the right use of your worries! 

St. Augustine 

Not even the saints and the faithful worshipers of the one true and most high God are safe from the many temptations and lies of the devil. But in this abode of weakness, and in these wicked days, the state of anxiety also has its use. It stimulates us to look with keener longing for that security where peace is complete and unassailable. 

There we shall enjoy the gifts of nature – that is, all that God, the creator of all natures, has given our nature. These gifts are not only good, but eternal – not only of the spirit, now healed by wisdom, but also of the body, renewed by the resurrection. There the virtues will no longer struggle against any vice or evil, but will enjoy the reward of victory, eternal peace undisturbed by any adversary. This is the final blessedness, the ultimate consummation, the end without end. 

Here we say we are blessed when we have what peace we can enjoy in a good life. But such blessedness is mere misery compared to that final happiness. 

When we mortals have such peace as this life can give us, virtue (if we live rightly) makes proper use of the advantages of this peaceful condition. When we do not have that peace, virtue still makes good use of the evils we suffered. But real virtue refers all the advantages it makes good use of, and everything it does to make good use of good things and evil things, and even itself, to that end in which we shall enjoy the best and greatest peace possible. 

TGB: The path to peace, says Marcus Aurelius, is to be content with yourself, honor the light of reason within, live harmoniously with others, and be grateful to the gods for the universe and your place in it. Augustine recognizes that this ideal is unobtainable without grace. Virtue is all well and good, but without the assurance of its victory over suffering and evil it is tragically futile. Peace in this life is but a dream if there is no peace in eternity.