It may come as a surprise to some to learn that St. Augustine quite spontaneously regarded contemplation as a communal endeavor. Solitude may be necessary for certain degrees of contemplative prayer on earth, but in heaven contemplation is the beatitude not merely of separate individuals but of an entire city. That city is a living organism whose mind is the Truth of God and whose will is His Love and His Liberty.

God created Adam as a pure contemplative. Material creation was subject to Adam's reason, and the soul of Adam was perfectly subjected to God. United to God in a very high degree of vision and love, Adam would have transmitted to all mankind his own perfection, his own liberty, his own peace in the vision of God. In Adam all men were to be, as it were, "one contemplative" perfectly united to one another in their one vision and love of the One Truth.

Original sin, an act of spiritual apostasy from the contemplative vision and love of God, severed the union with God that depended on the subjection of Adam's will to the will of God. Since God is Truth, Adam's apostasy from Him was a fall into falsehood, unreality. Since God is unity, Adam's fall was a collapse into division and disharmony.

All mankind fell from God in Adam. And just as Adam's soul was divided against itself by sin, so all men were divided against one another by selfishness. The envy of Cain, which would have been impossible in Eden,bred murder in a world where each self-centered individual had become his own little god, his own judge and standard of good and evil, falsity and truth.

St. Augustine traces the history of this divided city of conflict and hate through all history from the fall of Adam to the end of time and even into eternity. But at the same time he contemplates and exposes to our gaze the history of that other City, planned by God to repair the work that Adam's sin could not be allowed to ruin. It was in the "new Adam," Christ, that man was to be raised again to the friendship and vision of God - not indeed the contemplation Adam had enjoyed in Eden, still less the clear vision of beatitude: but heaven was to begin on earth in faith and charity/love. God would be "seen" but only in darkness and man would be united in "one Body" but only at the cost of struggle and self-sacrifice.

The whole of history since the ascension of Jesus into heaven is concerned with one work only: the building and perfecting of this "City of God". Even the wars, persecutions, and all the other evils which have made the history of empires terrible to read and more terrible to live through, have had only this one purpose: they have been the flails with which God has separated the wheat from the chaff, the elect from the damned. They have been the tools that have fashioned the living stones which God would set in the walls of His city of vision.

The difference between the two cities is the difference between two loves. Those who are united in the City of God are united by the love of God and of one another in God. Those who belong to the other city are indeed not united in any real sense: but it can be said that they have one thing in common besides their opposition to God: each one of them is intent on the love of himself above all else.

In St. Augustine's classical expression: "These two cities were made by two loves: the earthly city by the love of self unto the contempt of God, and the heavenly city by the love of God unto the contempt of self." (Book 14, c. 28) The earthly city glories in its own power, the heavenly in the power of God.

But there is a deeper psychological explanation of these two loves and...............

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -