Reflection:
In one of my morning meditations and readings I came across this pearl of spiritual wisdom by one of the Early Church Fathers, St. Augustine of Hippo, and thought it appropriate for sharing with the wider community of faith. The commentary is by Donald X Burt.
Wandering the Circumference:
Do not marvel that the soul experiences more and more emptiness as it continues to reach out to so many things in this world. Consider the circle. Whatever its size there is one middle point to which all parts of the circumference converge. If you wander off from the center to any other part, you lose sight of the whole. So too when the soul wanders out from itself, it is confused by the enormity of things it finds there. Its nature forces it to look everywhere for that which is one, but the very multitude of things it finds outside itself stands in the way of it ever finding the oneness that it seeks. On Order, 1.2.3
One of the reasons why we have so much trouble in finding peace in our families, in our nation, in our world at large, is because none of us are “well tied together.” We would dearly love to find the answers to life, the secret of love, that center where finally we could find rest. The trouble is that it is hard to believe that this center lies within us. We spend our days running around the circumference of life experimenting with possessions, lifestyles, ideologies, careers, and people. We seek unity but find only complexity. Perhaps it is only when we finally get old and tired that we wearily return to the center and find there the one God we have been looking for all the time.