Lent with the Early Church Fathers Day 15

Day 15

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) 

When God speaks, hear! 

Augustine 

It is a great thing for a person, and a very rare one, after contemplating the whole creation, corporeal and incorporeal, and seeing how changeable it is, to pass beyond it, to reach to the unchangeable being of God, and – in that peak of contemplation – to learn from God himself that no one but God has made everything outside God. 

God speaks with us, not by means of some audible creature making a sound, so the vibrations of the air connect the one who speaks with the one who hears. Nor does he even speak by means of a spiritual being with the appearance of the body, such as we see in dreams or similar states – for even in that case, God is speaking as if to our bodily ears, because he is speaking by means of the appearance of a body, and with the appearance of a real space between him and us, visions being exact representations of real things. 

No, God does not speak of these things, but by the truth itself – if anyone is prepared to hear with the mind rather than with the body. For he speaks to that part of us that is better than everything else in us. Only God, in fact, is better than that part of us. 

TGB: Great detectives complain that we see, but do not observe. Augustine would complain instead that we may observe, but do not really see.