Lent: Week 4
In a sermon to his people in the fifth century Augustine said:
We are now travelers on a journey. We cannot stay in this place forever. We are on our way, not yet home. Our present state is one of hopeful anticipation, not yet unending enjoyment. We must run without laziness or respite so that we may at last arrive at our destination.
Sermon 103, 1
Some 1500 years later when I was chaplain at a small New England College I gave a sermon that began this way:
“Today the doctors told me that I am going to die.”
Augustine For Today
MARCH 30 – SAINT IRENE
“Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! Late have I loved you! And, behold, you were within me, and I outside myself, and there I searched for you.”
Confessions X, 27
Augustine For Today
MARCH 29 – SAINT SECONDO
“Particularly when I am worn out by the upsets of the world, I cast myself without reservation on the love of those who are especially close to me. I know that I can safely entrust my thoughts and considerations to those who are aflame with Christian love and have become faithful friends to me. For I am entrusting them not to another human, but to God in whom they dwell and by whom they are who they are.”
Letter 73, 3
Augustine For Today
MARCH 28 – SAINT SIXTUS III
“Let God be enough for you, because he doesn’t desert you. He thought about you before you existed, and won’t he think about you so that you can stay alive? You have already come to believe in him, you have praised him, you have placed your hopes in him, and will you lack what he knows we all need?”
Sermon 107A, 5
Augustine For Today
MARCH 27 – SAINT RUPERT
“If you recall that you have neglected to make up with someone, then wake up and shake off your listlessness. If you are so keen to exact payment from your debtor, just think for a moment that you are God’s debtor. If you are ashamed to ask someone to forgive you, overcome this bad sort of shame with a good sort of fear, so that with destructive animosities terminated, with them finally dead, you yourselves may live.”
Sermon 209, 1
Augustine For Today
MARCH 26 – SAINT EMMANUEL
“Desire God so that you may have him, and then finally you will be really happy. This alone will make you truly happy. Love this, possess this; you can have this when you wish and without cost.”
Commentary on Psalm 32, 16
Augustine For Today
MARCH 25 – THE ANNUNCIATION OF THE LORD
“Seek what is better than you are so that you can be made better by it. If you desire gold, you may or may not obtain it. But you can always possess God whenever you wish.”
Commentary on Psalm 32, 16
Augustine For Today
MARCH 24 – SAINT BERTHA
Let us put our trust in God, my brothers and sisters. This is the first commandment, the first principle of religion and of our life: to have our heart anchored in faith and thus to live uprightly, to hold ourselves aloof from mere pleasure, to endure temporal misfortune.
Sermon 38, 5
Lent: Week 3
Three of the four gospel writers tell the story of the first time human beings were called to ascend a mountain to see the transfigured Jesus-God. Matthew gives the following description of the event: Six days after his first prediction of his passion and death, Jesus took Peter, James and his brother John, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. And his face shone as the sun, and his garments became white as snow. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elias talking together with him. Then Peter addressed Jesus, saying, “Lord it is good for us to be here!” Matt 17:1-4
Augustine For Today
MARCH – 22 SAINT BENVENUTO
The chief reason for Christ’s coming was so that we should know how much God loves us, and knowing this be on fire with love for him who loved us first, and for our neighbor at the bidding and after the example of him who became our neighbor by loving uswhen we were not his neighbors, but had wandered far from him.
Catechizing the Uninstructed I,6,8