“I implore you all, love with me, run with me by believing. Let us long for the country up above. Let us pant and sigh for that country up above. Let us realize that we are strangers here.
What will we see then? Let the Gospel say it now: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,’ (John 1:1).
You will come to the fountain from which you have been sprayed with dew-drops, from where a ray has been sent obliquely by roundabout ways into the darkness of your heart. You will see the naked Light itself.
You are being purified so as to see and bear it. ‘Beloved,’ says John himself, as I reminded you yesterday, ‘we are the children of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be; we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is,’ (1 John 3:2).
I really do sense your feelings of yearning, of eagerness, being lifted up with me to what is above. But the body which is perishable is weighing upon the soul, and this earthly dwelling is pressing down the mind filled with many thoughts.
So I too then am going to put away this copy of the Gospel. You are all going to depart as well, each to your own home. It has been good, sharing the Light together, good rejoicing in it, good exulting in it together; but when we depart from each other, let us not depart from Him.”
–Augustine of Hippo, Homilies on the Gospel of John, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, Trans. Edmund Hill (New York: New City Press, 2009), 550. Augustine is concluding his sermon on John 8:13-14.
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