Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Augustine on the alluring grace of God


God turns resistance to his will into delight. The fact of it is a great mystery, the reality no less so. As Augustine wrote:
Do not think that you are dragged to God against your will. The mind is drawn by love which is a source of inexpressible pleasure. There is a pleasure of the heart whose sweetness consists in the bread of heaven.
Give me a lover, he feels what I am talking about.
Give me a man in a state of desire, of hunger, a traveller thirsty on a desert road who is sighing for the spring at his eternal home.
Give me a man like that, he knows what I mean.
But if I address myself to a cold person, he has no notion what I am speaking of.
Tractatus in Johannis Evangelium, 26.4

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