The angels surround and help the priest when he is celebrating Mass.
Saint AugustineRead
The entire life of a good Christian is in fact an exercise of holy desire. You do not yet see what you long for, but the very act of desiring prepares you, so that when he comes you may see and be utterly satisfied.
Interpretation
Desiring something good is a crucial part of spiritual growth, preparing us for fulfillment.
Saint Augustine emphasizes that the essence of a good Christian life is rooted in the longing for a deeper spiritual connection. This desire not only shapes our character but also prepares us for the eventual satisfaction that comes when we realize our spiritual aspirations, suggesting that the journey of yearning is as significant as the destination.
In practice
In a sermon to encourage congregants to embrace their spiritual aspirations.
The angels surround and help the priest when he is celebrating Mass.
There is no health in those who are displeased by an element in Your creation, just as there was none in me when I was displeased by many things You had made. Because my soul didn't dare to say that my God displeased me, it refused to attribute to You whatever was displeasing.
Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.
Who can map out the various forces at play in one soul? Man is a great depth, O Lord. The hairs of his head are easier by far to count than his feeling, the movements of his heart.
Whatever skills I have acquired, whatever gifts I have been given, I place them at Your service.
Everyone who observes himself doubting observes a truth, and about that which he observes he is certain; therefore he is certain about a truth. Everyone therefore who doubts whether truth exists has in himself a truth on which not to doubt.... Hence one who can doubt at all ought not to doubt the existence of truth.
War can only be qualified by its object, and there is neither foreign war nor civil war, there is only just or unjust war.
Since each person, as an individual, is the not-being of the other, it is never possible to eliminate non-understanding completely.
I think if a physician wrote on a death certificate that old age was the cause of death, he'd be thrown out of the union. There is always some final event, some failure of an organ, some last attack of pneumonia, that finishes off a life. No one dies of old age.
Christianity, unlike any other religion in the world, begins with catastrophe and defeat. Sunshine religions and psychological inspirations collapse in calamity and wither in adversity. But the Life of the Founder of Christianity, having begun with the Cross, ends with the empty tomb and victory.
I detest the niqab and the burka for their erasure of women and for dangerously equating piety with that disappearance - the less of you I can see, the closer you must be to God.
Freedom is the alone unoriginated birthright of man, and belongs to him by force of his humanity; and is independence on the will and co-action of every other in so far as this consists with every other person's freedom.
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