Third Sunday of Lent

Thoughts for the Week - Fr. R. Taouk 
4th March 2018

True Happiness and How to Find It
by St. Augustine

It may be said that all men do desire true happiness, but because the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, so that they cannot do what they would, they fall to what they can, and thus are content; because what they cannot do they do not want to do with sufficient intensity to make them able to do it.

Now, joy in truth is happiness; for it is joy in You, God who are Truth, my Light, the Salvation of my countenance and my God. This happiness all desire, this which alone is happiness all desire, for all desire to have joy in truth. I have met many who wished to deceive, but not one who wished to be deceived. But where have they come to know happiness, save where they came to know truth likewise? For they love truth, since they do not wish to be deceived and when they love happiness, which as we have seen is simply joy in truth, they must love truth also: and they could not love it unless there were some knowledge of it in their memory. That being so, why do they not rejoice in it? Why are they not happy? Because they are much more concerned over things which are more powerful to make them unhappy than truth is to make them happy, for they remember truth so slightly. There is but a dim light in men; let them walk, let them walk, lest darkness overtake them.

Why does truth call forth hatred? Why is your servant treated as an enemy by those to whom he preaches the truth, if happiness is loved, which is simply joy in truth? Simply because truth is loved in such a way that those who love some  other thing want it to be the truth, and, precisely because they do not wish to be deceived, are unwilling to be convinced that they are deceived. Thus they hate the truth for the sake of that other thing which they love because they take it for truth. They love truth when it enlightens them; they hate truth when it accuses them. Because they do not wish to be deceived and do wish to deceive, they love truth when it reveals itself, and hate it when it reveals them.

Thus it shall reward them as they deserve; those who do not wish to be revealed by truth, truth will unmask them against their will, but it will not reveal itself to them. Thus, thus, even thus, does the human mind, blind and inert, vile and ill-behaved, desire to keep itself concealed, yet desire that nothing should be concealed from itself. But the contrary happens to it - it cannot lie hidden from truth, but only truth from it. Even so, for all its worthlessness, the human mind would rather find its joy in truth than falsehood. So that it shall be happy, if, with no other thing to distract, it shall one day come to rejoice in that sole Truth by which all things are true.