Tractates on the Gospel of John (continued)
92 ST. AUGUSTINE of the flesh terrified? If you should consult them, there is nothing better structured than that body, nothing better arranged. The symmetry of the limbs and the loveliness of his complexion entice the eyes. And yet when you hear that he is a thief, you flee from the man because of your mind.
(2) On the other side you see a bent-over old man, leaning on a cane, scarcely able to move, ploughed all over with wrinkles. What do you see that delights the eyes? You hear that he is just; you love him, you embrace him. Such rewards were promised to us, my brothers; love some such thing, sigh for such a kingdom, long for such a country, if you wish to attain that with which our Lord came, that is, grace and truth. But if you desire physical rewards from God, you are still under the Law and therefore you will not fulfill the Law itself.
(3) For when you see that these temporal things abound in those who offend God, your steps waver and you say to yourself, "Look, I worship God. I run to church every day; my knees are worn out from praying. And ye*^ I am constantly sick. Some men commit murders and commit robberies; they exult and abound, it goes well for them." Were these then the sort of things you were looking for from God? Surely you belonged to grace. If God gave grace to you, precisely because he gave it gratuitously, love gratuitously. Don't love God for a reward; he is himself your reward. Let your soul say, "One thing I have asked of the Lord; this shall I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my hfe, that I may gaze upon the delight of the Lord."^^ (4) Fear not that you may fail from a surfeit; such will be the delight in beauty that it will always be present to you and you will never be sated — rather you will always be sated, and yet never be sated. For if I say that you will not be sated, there will be hunger; if I say that you will be sated, I fear surfeit. Where there will be neither surfeit nor hunger, I know not what I should say. But God has that which he may show to those who find no way to express it and yet believe that they will receive it.
72. Ibid.