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.
Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with starvation, warfare, and tyranny.
The world we live in is vastly different from the world we think we live in.
If . . . a principle of true Religion [i.e., true Christianity] should . . . gain ground, there is no estimating the effects on public morals, and the consequent influence on our political welfare.
Who included me among the ranks of the human race?
Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you.
The future doesn't exist. The only thing that exists is now and our memory of what happened in the past. But because we invented the idea of a future, we're the only animal that realized we can affect the future by what we do today.
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