non dico... : "Here, you see, we do one thing, there another, I do not say ..." I suggest that what
134 SAINT AUGUSTINE - SERMONS perform those works of mercy? Who can you break bread to, when nobody is in need? What sick people can you visit, where perpetual health is the rule? What dead persons can you bury, where immortality never dies? The works of necessity vanish; as for the works of iniquity, if you've done them here, you don't get there.
What are we going to do there? Tell me. Sleep? Yes, here people who have nothing to do just sleep. But there's no sleep there, because there's no weariness. So we aren't going to perform works of necessity, aren't going to sleep—what are we going to do? None of us must be afraid of boredom, none of us must imagine it's going to be so boring there. Do you find it boring now to be well? You can get tired of anything and everything in this age; can you get tired of being well? If you don't get tired of good health, will you get tired of immor¬ tality? So what activity are we going to engage in? Amen and Alleluia. Here, you see, we do one thing and another; there one thing,31 don't say day and night, but day without end; what the powers of heaven, the Seraphim, say now without ever getting bored: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God ofSabaoth (Is 6:3).
They say this without getting bored. Does your pulse, now, ever get tired? As long as you live, your pulse goes on beating. You do something, and you get as tired as tired can be, and you rest, and you go back to work, and your pulse never tires. Just as your pulse never grows tired in your condition of good health, so your tongue and heart never grow tired of the praises of God in your condition of immortality. Listen to a testimony of what your business is. What do I mean by "your business"? The business I mean is leisure.4 What can leisurely business be? Praising the Lord. Listen to this statement of it: Blessed are those who dwell in your house. That's what the psalm says: Blessed are those who dwell in your house. And as though we were to ask what makes them blessed: "Will they have a lot of gold?" Those who have a lot of gold have a lot of misery. Those who dwell in your house are blessed. What makes them blessed? This is what their blessedness consists of: They will praise you for ever and ever (Ps 84:4).
NOTES
cannot really date fragments; the first section of this fragment appears in the Maurist edition of Sermon 217, which for the rest is only intermittently like Sermon 217 in this edition. There was clearly a big mix-up of manuscripts. But this "fragment" strikes me as being a complete sermon in itself, with only a sentence or two, perhaps, missing at the beginning. Augustine doesn't mention the Transfiguration here, and I do not know if that was then the prescribed gospel for the second Sunday in Lent; but this would certainly be a most suitable sermon for that day.
2. See Is 58:7.
3. I have emended the text, which seems defective. It runs, Hie enim agimus aliud, ibi aliud, non dico... : "Here, you see, we do one thing, there another, I do not say ..." I suggest that what he is more likely to have said is: Hie enim agimus aliud et aliud, ibi unum, non dico ....