âDid St. Augustine know joy? Read his Confessions. In his sermons, Augustine called this earth âa smiling place.â Portions of his work read like a litany to the goodness and beauty of creation. His biographer, Peter Brown, describes him as a man immoderately in love with the world. And the reason is simple. Augustine loved the world because he was in love with the Author of the beauty and goodness he found there.
What does that mean for us today? Augustine would tell us that the real problem with the world is bigger than climate change or abortion or poverty or family breakdown, and itâs much more stubborn. The real problem with the world is us.
As Augustine said in his sermons, itâs no use complaining about the times, because we are the times. How we live shapes them. And when we finally learn to fill our hearts with something more than the noise and narcotics of the wounded societies we helped create; when we finally let our hearts rest in God as Augustine did; then â and only then â the world will begin to change, because God will use the witness of our lives to change it.â
- Archbishop Charles Chaput, Strangers in a Strange Land
â...let us live well and times shall be good.
We are the times: such as we are, such are the times.
âSt. Augustine



















