something to be got through—helplessness, total dependency, inability to communicate, a scarcely
298 SAINT A UGUSTINE - SERMONS school, perhaps they don't; perhaps they marry, perhaps they don't; perhaps they'll have children, perhaps they won't; perhaps they'll have good ones, perhaps they'll have bad ones; perhaps they'll have good wives or husbands, perhaps bad ones; perhaps they'll be rich, perhaps they'll be poor; perhaps they will be of no account, perhaps they will be highly honored. Among all the other things, can this be said about them: "Perhaps they'll die, perhaps they won't"? So, every single person bom falls into a disease, from which nobody bom can escape. They all die of it, in the way in which one is in the habit of saying, "He's got dropsy, he's bound to die, nobody gets over it; he's riddled with elephantia¬ sis, he's bound to die, nobody gets over it." So: "He's riddled with birth, he's bound to die, nobody gets over it."14
So then, because you are bound to die some time, seeing that nobody's life is even allowed to last very long, not even the life any decrepit old soul you like to think of has lived from infancy, the only thing left to do is to take refuge in the one who died for us, and by rising again gave us hope. Because in this life which we are running through now we can only die, and are unable to make this life we love so much an eternal one, we must take refuge in the one who did promise us eternal life.
I mean, just notice, brothers and sisters, what the Lord has promised us: life that is both eternal and blissful. This life, certainly, is miserable enough. Can anyone be unaware of that, can there be anyone who doesn't admit it? How much we have to put up with, how much we undergo in this life that we don't want to! Quarrels, disagreements, trials, mistaken judgments about one another, so that sometimes, unawares, we embrace an enemy, go in fear of a friend; where there's hunger, there's nakedness, there's cold, there's heat, there's weariness, there's illness, there's jealousy. Certainly this life is miserable enough. And yet, if this miserable life could be made eternal for us, wouldn't we just congratulate ourselves? Wouldn't we just say, "I want to be exactly as I am now, only I don't want to die"? If you now want to keep a life that is bad,15 what kind of person must he be who will give us a life that is both everlasting and blissful? But if you want to attain to a life that is everlasting and blissful, have a temporal life that is good.16 It's good in its work, it'll be gQod in its reward. But if you refuse to do the work, how can you have the face to seek the reward? If you can't say to Christ, I have done what you commanded," how will you have the nerve to say, "Pay me what you promised"?
1 forma-, apparently in a rather Aristotelian sense, as that which makes anything the specific kind of thing it is. v
NOTES
2. Augustine had an extremely poor opinion of infancy as an acceptable period of life; it was something to be got through—helplessness, total dependency, inability to communicate, a scarcely human condition—as quickly as possible. See Confessions I, vi, 7-8.