Dic, Epicuree, quae res faciat beatum.


Stoicorum opinio Apostolo non probata. Sed cum Stoicis non indecens fortasse luctamen est. Ecce enim interroganti ubi ponant efficiens beatae vitae, id est,quod facit in homine beatam vitam: respondent, non corporis voluptatem, sed animi esse virtutem. Quid Apostolus? Annuit? Si annuit, annuamus. Sed non annuit: revocat enim Scriptura eos qui confidunt in virtute sua (Psal. XLVIII, 7*) . Epicureus itaque in corpore ponens summum hominis bonum, in se spem ponit. Sed enim Stoicus in animo ponens summum hominis bonum, in re quidem meliori hominis posuit; sed etiam ipse in se spem posuit. Homo est autem et Epicureus et Stoicus. Maledictus igitur omnis qui spem suam ponit in homine (Ierem. XVII, 5) . Quid ergo? Iam constitutis ante oculos nostros tribus, Epicureo, Stoico, Christiano, interrogemus singulos. Dic, Epicuree, quae res faciat beatum. Respondet: Voluptas corporis. Dic, Stoice. Virtus animi. Dic, Christiane. Donum Dei. (Sermo 150.7.8). 

*Ps. 48.7-8: 7 Qui confidunt in virtute sua
et in multitudine divitiarum suarum gloriantur.
8 Etenim seipsum non redimet homo;
non dabit Deo propitiationem suam.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ephata

  Ephata by Evan Smith My grandmother died and the world slowly fell empty, not of people, but of a song. Her song. She did not sing to me; it wasn’t her singing that drifted away, but a song I didn’t know I’d been hearing all my life, and when she left, I heard it as it died. I was thinking a lot about song when she died. I had just learned of the Mambai of Indonesia and their two forms of ritual song: keo and beha. In keo, they make a lot of noise; in beha, there is none. Keo is their gift to the world, which in their accounting, is silent: birds do not make music, nor does the wind in the trees. The Mambai impress the silent world with voice through keo, and the world gives them life in return. Their rituals, their places of song, show them as part of the working of nature, the spontaneous processes that require no human guidance. Without keo, they have no life, and with it, their place in the world becomes natural. The Mambai have remembered something that mechanized modernity ...
Read more

Formica

Vide formicam Dei: surgit quotidie, currit ad ecclesiam Dei, orat, audit lectionem, hymnum cantat, ruminat quod audivit, apud se cogitat, recondit intus grana collecta de area.   Enarratio in Ps. Sermo ad Plebem. 66.3
Read more

Dracones

Laudate Dominum de terra, dracones et omnes abyssi.  Dracones circa aquam versantur, de speluncis procedunt, feruntur in aera; concitatur propter eos aer: magna quaedam sunt animantia dracones, maiora non sunt super terram. Propterea inde coepit dicere:  Dracones et omnes abyssi.  Sunt autem speluncae aquarum latentium, unde fontes, unde flumina procedunt; et alia procedunt, ut fluant super terram, alia occulte subter eunt: et totum hoc, atque omnis ista humida natura aquarum, simul cum mari et isto infimo aere, abyssus vel abyssi vocantur, ubi vivunt dracones et laudant Deum. (Enarratio in psalmum 148.9)
Read more