Week 10- Being In The Middle

One man fell into a gutter. It was nighttime and a few passersby immediately ran up to him with concern. Instead of taking the proffered hand he sat there in wonder as though dumb struck. Finally he said,’ there goes the Halley’s comet.”Yes there was something strange indeed streaking across the night-sky.
The moralist who watched the crowd and a man who refused to get up and go remarked to his companion without breaking his stride thus:’ the bad always finds his own level.’ This is how we form our opinions, from insufficient evidences. Much more so in the area of our beliefs. Religion is one area where many seem to be certain what is the correct scriptural position and what is heresy.

St. Augustine And The Heretic.

Aurelius Augustinus of Tagaste, North Africa was won over from his dissolute ways when he and a friend of his were holidaying and they heard a neighbor child singing a refrain,’ Tolle Lige, Tolle Lige,”(Take up and read, Take up and read). He took it up as divine guidance and read from the book of Romans wherein St. Paul’s admonition,” make not provision for the flesh,” made a deep impact to win him over from his hedonistic way of life. At that moment his friend who also heard the child did not think it anything special.
That moment nevertheless was a turning point: one going on to become the father of medieval Roman Catholicism and the other, a heretic. When the latter was at the death- bed the saint went to see him. The heretic resisted a last minute conversion saying that while Aurelius found God whose grace was irresistible he found quite something else. When the venerable Bishop asked him to spell out what he meant he merely quoted his friend’s dictum:” In essentials, unity; in non- essentials, liberty and in all things charity.” When pressed further he said, ” Allow me to die as a heretic; we both were searching for the same- we both, so I believe, found what we searched for. Heresy or liberty? Neither you nor I have time to convince the other as to the opposite. So I shall not, either in this life or in any other.”
benny