Tractates on the Gospel of John (continued)
130 ST. AUGUSTINE to say this, that the Spirit moans when he has perfect and eternal happiness with the Father and the Son? For the Holy Spirit is God, as the Son of God is God and the Father God, I have said "God" thrice, but I have not said three gods; for there is God thrice rather than three gods. For the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God. You know this very well. Therefore the Holy Spirit does not moan in himself with himself in that Trinity, in that beatitude, in that eternity of his substance; but he moans in us because he makes us moan.
(2) And it is no small thing that the Holy Spirit teaches us to moan. For he makes known to us that we are in exile, and he teaches us to sigh for our native land, and we moan with that very longing. He who is well off in this world, rather who thinks he is well off, who revels in the enjoyment of carnal things, and in the abundance of temporal possessions, and in a hollow happiness, has the voice of a raven; for the voice of the raven is full of loud shrieking, not of moaning. But he who knows that he hves in the midst of the affliction of this mortal life, and that he is exiled from the Lord,^ that he does not yet possess that unending beatitude which has been promised to us, but that he has it in hope, and will have it in fact, when the Lord comes with shining brightness in his manifestation, who before came hidden in his lowliness — he who knows this is the one who moans.
(3) And as long as he moans on this account, he moans well; the Spirit has taught him to moan, he has learned how to moan from the dove. For many moan in dealing with unearthly unhappiness; either shaken by losses, or depressed by physical illness, or shut up in prisons, or bound in chains, or tossed by the waves of the sea, or trapped by some treachery of their enemies, they moan. But they do not moan with the moaning of the dove; they do not moan with the love of God; they do not moan with the Spirit. And so when such men have been freed from these afflictions, they rejoice in loud voices, and from this it is clear that they are ravens, not doves. Rightly the raven was sent from the ark and it did not return; the
3. Cf. 2 Cor 5.6.