The angels surround and help the priest when he is celebrating Mass.
Saint AugustineRead
Let us understand that God is a physician, and that suffering is a medicine for salvation, not a punishment for damnation.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the belief that suffering is a necessary part of spiritual growth and healing, rather than a mere punishment.
Saint Augustine expresses a profound philosophical perspective on the nature of suffering and its role in human salvation. He suggests that like a physician who administers medicine for healing, God uses suffering as a means to purify and save us, positioning it not as a retribution for wrongdoing but as a transformative aspect of the human experience that leads to spiritual enlightenment and redemption.
In practice
In a speech about personal growth at a community gathering.
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.
Our countrymen have all the folly of the ass and all the passiveness of the sheep.
In the beautiful, man sets himself up as the standard of perfection; in select cases he worships himself in it. Man believes that the world itself is filled with beauty -he forgets that it is he who has created it. He alone has bestowed beauty upon the world -alas! only a very human, an all too human, beauty.
The ideally non-violent state will be an ordered anarchy.
If you remember your past too well you start blaming your present for it. Look what they did to me, that's what caused me to be like this, it's not my fault. Permit me to correct you: it probably is your fault. And kindly spare me the details.
I love my country, and it hurts not to be able to see my country, as I did for so many years. I hope that I will one day be able to live in a peaceful Colombia.
Humanity's legacy of stories and storytelling is the most precious we have. All wisdom is in our stories and songs. A story is how we construct our experiences. At the very simplest, it can be: 'He/she was born, lived, died.' Probably that is the template of our stories - a beginning, middle, and end. This structure is in our minds.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.