There is only one thing you can be sure of: that you
will die; everything else in this life, good or bad, is uncertain except death.
Whatever you turn there is uncertainty; only death is
sure, but even the day of your death is uncertain.
We are wanderers with no permanent home on earth; that
is in Heaven, and we do not know when we shall hear: “Come, set out for home”.
Only let us be ready. We shall be, if we long now for
our true fatherland.
And yet only with difficulty, because of our weakness,
can we unceasingly direct our hearts and works to God. We try to find something
in this world to rest in, to pause and lie down.
I do not mean the resting places lovers of evil seek:
foul amusements, cheating others, a life of luxury.
Now look at the good man: he seeks his whole
refreshment in his family, in a humble life, in the house he has built for
himself; these are the satisfactions of the innocent.
But our all embracing love must be for eternal life,
and so God allows bitterness to be mixted with these things. Don’t be upset
when these innocent pleasures have their trials; the man journeying to his own
country must not mistake the inn for his home.
(S. Augustini, Enarr.
in ps. 38, 19.21; in ps. 40.5)
