filth like swine, must be esteemed as truly wise. Why so? Because the latter look for and enjoy temporal pleasures and goods, and profit by them as long as they live; while the just mortify themselves, suffer many trials and discomforts, and voluntarily undertake most laborious tasks, and all this in the hope of an imaginary reward they expect hereafter. There you have an argument that convinced even heretics, and reduced them to silence.
St. Augustine. St. Augustine used a similar proof to console and encourage a distressed soul who complained to him of having so much to suffer that faith was in danger and despair at hand. You are quite wrong, said the Saint, and have made a great mistake in allowing yourself to be disturbed because virtue is ill-treated and vice rewarded in this world; for you only consider what your eyes can see; you regard only this short life, and the few days that make it up, and you wish God to fulfil all your desires in that fleeting moment.[1] Is it not your desire that God should bless with prosperity in this world all His faithful servants, and chastise the wicked, and that He should thus pronounce His final sentence in this short time? Truly that is the meaning of your words! But God will not take much notice of them! Wait a little; everything shall come in due time.[2] God will see to everything; when? In His own time. And what is God’s time? Eternity. Therefore if you wish to strengthen and comfort yourself in your faith, direct your thoughts to God’s eternity, and when you see the apparent injustice with which He acts towards men on this earth, by being so liberal to His enemies and so stingy and harsh to His friends, conclude that He has an eternity for the former as well as for the latter in which He will give both what belongs to them by right, since He does not do so in this life. Such is the argument used by St. Augustine.
St. John Chrysostom. St. John Chrysostom speaks in the same sense: “Where are they who do good here to enjoy their reward, and where are the wicked to receive punishment?”[3] “Son, remember,” shall God say to the sinner as Abraham said to the rich glutton in hell, “that thou didst receive good things in thy lifetime,”[4] therefore thou hast no further claims now; and if thou hast done
- ↑ Attendis ad dies tuos paucos, et diebus tuis paucis vis impieri omnia.
- ↑ Implebit Deus intempore suo.
- ↑ Ubi, qui bene hic operati fuerint, bonis fruentur; ubi autem mali contrariis; nisi sit futura vita post hanc?—St. John Chrys., Hom. 9, in II. Cor. iv.
- ↑ Fili, recordare quia recepisti bona in vita tua.—Luke xvi. 25.
