The Catholic University of America Press wishes you and your loved ones a very happy Thanksgiving! The staff, faculty and students of CatholicU, as well as our authors and readers, will be in our prayers throughout the holiday season.
Here are a few salient Augustine quotes for reflection as we prepare for Thanksgiving and Advent, taken from the Fathers of the Church series and curated by Philip Melton:
Consider the changes of day and night, the very constant order of heavenly bodies, the fourfold change of the seasons, the fall of leaves and their return to the trees the following spring, the infinite power in seeds, the beauty of light, and the varieties of colors, sounds, smells, and tastes; and then give me a man who sees and experiences these things for the first time—he is amazed and overwhelmed at these miracles. But we have little respect for all these things, not because of the ease with which we know them (for what is more obscure than their causes?) but surely because we constantly experience them.
The Advantage of Believing 16:34 (FOTC 4)
Who can describe in words the splendor of the sky? Who can describe in words the abundance of the earth? Who can adequately praise the variation of the seasons? Who can adequately praise the power of seeds?
Tractates on the Gospel of John 1.9.3 (FOTC 78)
God left no part of this creation without its appropriate peace, for in the last and least of all His living things, even the entrails are wonderfully ordained—not to mention the beauty of birds’ wings, and the flower of the fields, and the leaves of trees, and, above the beauty of the sky and earth, that of angels and of man.
City of God 5.11 (FOTC 8)
The Quotable Augustine can be ordered online here.