Life is a Dream with Many Changes of Scene
I am not telling a lie: human life is a dream.
In our dreams we look without seeing, we listen without hearing, we taste and touch without tasting or touching, we speak without saying anything, we walk without moving. We seem to be moving normally even though we stay still and to be making our habitual gestures even though we are not. The mind invents realities that are entirely imaginary.
When we are awake, our thoughts are like these dreams. They come and go. They meet and part. They fly away before we can catch them.
Nor is our body any different from a dream. Is not its beauty likely to go rotten before it is ripe? Is not its health continually being threatened with illness? How little it takes to destroy its strength! How easily its senses deteriorate!
Our careers are no less precarious. Often a single day is enough to scatter a great work to the winds. Many people who are held in respect and honour with a sudden change of events fall into disgrace. The greatest kingdoms on earth have been destroyed in a short time.
If we have so many changes of scene in life, and so many dark experiences, we ought to learn to distinguish what is virtuous from what is base, what is good from what is bad, what is just from what is unjust.
I give you an example of what I mean. Do you possess a lot of money? If so, give it away because the beauty of riches consists not in money-boxes but in helping the poor. Are you short of money? Be careful not to envy the rich. And don’t despair, because human affairs are always changing into their opposites.
Philo of Alexandria, cf. C. Cajetanus, Thesaurus Patrum VII, pp.4I55ff.
The Search for Long Life
Augustine said:
‘Wicked persons are allowed to go on living so that they may be reformed, or so that by means of their wickedness the virtuous may be put to the test.’
Jerome said:
‘The shortness of this life is the penalty for people’s sins. With all your might, hate what the world loves. Be dead to the world and let the world be dead to you. During your life despise what you cannot possess after your death.’
Isidore said:
‘Only in this life can you do good. What is awaiting you in the future life is not the opportunity of doing good but the reward of having done it.
‘Anyone who reflects on his own life in the light of its end, rather than the passing of the days, perceives how wretched and short it is.
‘If you are seeking long life, you ought to be seeking that life through which you come close to Christ, that is, eternal life. That life is real life: this life is only mortal life.
‘Ignorance of the end of life causes the individual to die at the moment he was least expecting it. So let all hasten to become free from their own wickedness. As long as we are alive Satan sets us on fire with desire for what is wrong: no sooner are we dead than he hurls us into the torments of hell.
‘In this world nothing is long lived, nothing lasts long, everything comes to an end quickly.’
Cyprian said:
‘Time on this earth means nothing to the person who is waiting for eternity.’
Defensor Grammaticus, Book of Sparkling Wisdom, 80 (SC86, pp.30Iff.)
~Thomas Spidlik, Drinking from the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary, Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World
