Feast of St. Augustine

The Catholic Church celebrates the Feast of St. Augustine today. Augustine was an important theologian of the Church in the 4^th century. When Christianity enjoyed freedom from persecutions, she could afford spending her energy to ponder over theological problems. Some ideas were blind alleys. Luckily, we have Augustine to fight against many of these heresies. He wrote The Confessions and The City of God. In The Confessions, he left us a very beautiful prayer in Book 10, Chapter 27. With a simple search on the Internet, it is not difficult to locate both the Latin original and an English translation.

Too late did I love You, O Fairness, so ancient, and yet so new! Too late did I love You! For behold, You were within, and I without, and there did I seek You; I, unlovely, rushed heedlessly among the things of beauty You made. You were with me, but I was not with You. Those things kept me far from You, which, unless they were in You, were not. You called, and cried aloud, and forced open my deafness. You gleamed and shine, and chase away my blindness. You exhaled odours, and I drew in my breath and do pant after You. I tasted, and do hunger and thirst. You touched me, and I burned for Your peace.

Sero te amavi, pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova, sero te amavi! et ecce intus eras et ego foris, et ibi te quaerebam, et in ista formosa, quae fecisti, deformis inruebam. mecum eras, et tecum non eram. ea me tenebant longe a te, quae si in te non essent, non essent. vocasti et clamasti et rupisti surditatem meam: coruscasti, splenduisti et fugasti caecitatem meam: fragrasti, et duxi spiritum, et anhelo tibi, gustavi et esurio et sitio, tetigisti me, et exarsi in pacem tuam.

For the next three weeks, we will be reading the first Epistle to the Corinthians. Let's learn from their experience.
The Church in Corinth faces a number of problems. Though Paul needed to reprimand them, he was still able to locate some good points to praise them. Though the church was plagued with problems, Paul was able to see God's grace working in them.
I give thanks to God always for you because of the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus,
that in every way you were enriched in him with all speech and all knowledge --
even as the testimony to Christ was confirmed among you --
so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 1:4-7)
The church is a church of sinners. Sinners are people who need God's help, who know that they need God's forgiveness, God's grace. Therefore, we should learn to accept and help sinful people inside the church. Of course, this is easier said than done. But we are called to be saints (1 Corinthians 1:2).
With God's grace, the Corinthians were enriched with all speech and all knowledge (1:5).
I see myself among the Corinthians. I spend a lot of effort to enrich myself in languages and knowledge. Assembly, BASIC, C, Fortran, Greek, Hebrew, HTML, Javascript, Pascal, Prolog ... Some people even flatter me by calling me a walking encyclopaedia. Yes, I have put in a lot of effort intellectually. Yet, I have not put enough effort to love my neighbour. To love the lovable is easy. To love the contemptible requires effort. Usually, we don't want to put in effort in this area. Now, I begin to appreciate the beauty of Augustine's prayer.

My dear Advocate, I pray that I do not love you too late and that I do not love my neighbours too late. Amen.