Christian Art | Lamentations Over The Body Of Jesus Christ Crucified
Office Of Readings | Week 28, Thursday, Ordinary Time | A Reading From The Homilies Of Saint Augustine On Saint John’s Gospel | Behold, I Shall Save My People
‘The light that illumines all men.’
Saint Augustine reflects on the words of Christ in John 6:44: ‘No one comes to me unless the Father draws him.’ He examines how divine grace and human freedom cooperate in faith. The verb ‘draws’ might suggest compulsion, but Augustine explains that this drawing occurs through love and desire, not force.
Augustine distinguishes between external compulsion and interior attraction. The Father draws the human person to Christ by awakening love for truth, goodness, and life — realities identified with Christ himself. This movement of desire is the will acting freely yet under the influence of grace. The soul approaches God not by constraint but by finding pleasure in what is true.
To illustrate, Augustine uses simple analogies. A sheep is drawn to fresh leaves; a child is drawn to nuts. Both act freely but are moved by attraction to what they love. In the same way, the soul is drawn by the vision of divine truth. When the Father reveals Christ, he sets before the soul the object of its deepest longing.
Augustine also interprets the language of hunger and thirst for justice in Matthew 5:6. Spiritual desire is the sign of grace already at work. Those who hunger and thirst now will be satisfied in the resurrection, when the truth they believe will become visible and complete. Thus, faith involves both present longing and future fulfilment.
For Augustine, this teaching unites divine initiative and human response. Grace kindles the desire that leads the will freely to God. The Father draws, the Son is the object of attraction, and the Spirit communicates the love that enables response. The process of salvation therefore consists not in coercion but in the transformation of desire.
A Reading From The Homilies Of Saint Augustine On Saint John’s Gospel | Behold, I Shall Save My People
No one comes to me unless the Father draws him. Do not think that you are drawn against your will; the will is drawn also by love. We must not be afraid of men who weigh words but are far from understanding what belongs above all to divine truth. They may find fault with this passage of Scripture and say to us: ‘How can I believe of my own free will if I am drawn to believe?’ I answer: ‘It is not enough that you are moved by the will, for you are drawn also by desire.’
What does this mean, to be drawn by desire? Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. The heart has its own desires; it takes delight, for example, in the bread from heaven. The poet could say: ‘Everyone is drawn by his own desire,’ not by necessity but by desire, not by compulsion but by pleasure. We can say then with greater force that one who finds pleasure in truth, in happiness, in justice, in everlasting life, is drawn to Christ, for Christ is all these things.
Are our bodily senses to have their desires, but not the will? If the will does not have its desires, how can Scripture say: The children of men will find their hope under the shadow of your wings, they will drink their fill from the plenty of your house, and you will give them drink from the running stream of your delights, for with you is the fountain of life, and in your light we shall see light.
Show me one who loves; he knows what I mean. Show me one who is full of longing, one who is hungry, one who is a pilgrim and suffering from thirst in the desert of this world, eager for the fountain in the homeland of eternity; show me someone like that, and he knows what I mean. But if I speak to someone without feeling, he does not understand what I am saying.
You have only to show a leafy branch to a sheep, and it is drawn to it. If you show nuts to a boy, he is drawn to them. He runs to them because he is drawn, drawn by love, drawn without any physical compulsion, drawn by a chain attached to his heart. ‘Everyone is drawn by his own desire.’ This is a true saying, and earthly delights and pleasures, set before those who love them, succeed in drawing them. If this is so, are we to say that Christ, revealed and set before us by the Father, does not draw us? What does the soul desire more than truth? Why then does the soul have hungry jaws, a spiritual palate as it were, sensitive enough to judge the truth, if not in order to eat and drink wisdom, justice, truth, eternal life?
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, that is, here on earth. They shall be satisfied, that is, in heaven. Christ says: I give each what he loves, I give each the object of his hope; he will see what he believed in, though without seeing it. What he now hungers for, he will eat; what he now thirsts for, he will drink to the full. When? At the resurrection of the dead, for I will raise him up on the last day.
Christian Prayer With Jesus
Father of truth,
you draw all people to your Son,
not by compulsion but through love of what is good.
Kindle in us the desire for wisdom and justice,
that our hearts may turn freely to Christ
and rest in the joy of his presence.
Grant that, hungering now for your kingdom,
we may be satisfied in the life to come,
through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Glossary Of Christian Terms
Drawn by the Father – A phrase from John 6:44 expressing God’s initiative in leading people to faith through grace and love rather than compulsion.
Desire – The interior movement of the will towards what it perceives as good; for Augustine, true desire is directed towards God.
Grace – The divine gift that enables human beings to seek, believe in, and love God.
Hunger and Thirst for Justice – A biblical image for the longing of the soul for divine truth and righteousness, fulfilled in eternal life.
Freedom of the Will – The capacity to choose; in Augustine’s thought, perfected when directed towards the good by divine grace.
Resurrection of the Dead – The final fulfilment of salvation, when faith gives way to direct vision of God.
Jesus explains certain aspects of the truth of his relationship with his Father. He explains that he is consubstantial with the Father. He is not created as we are; he is the Son; he has life in himself. On earth, Jesus is the mirror of the Father. It is through Christ that we may approach God. God the Father and God the Son share one being. The Father and the Son are equal [ … ]
Christian Art | George Herbert | The Temple | The Church | The Sinner George Herbert | The Temple | The Church | The Sinner Lord, how I am all ague, when I seek What I have treasur’d in my memorie! Since, if my soul make even with the week, Each seventh note by right is due to thee. I finde there quarries of pil’d vanities, But shreds of holinesse, that dare not venture To shew their face, since crosse to thy decrees. There the circumference earth is, heav’n the centre. In so much dregs the quintessence is small: The spirit and good extract of my heart Comes to about the many hundredth part. Yet Lord restore thine image, heare my call: And though my hard heart scarce to thee can grone, Remember that thou once didst write in stone. George Herbert | The Temple | The Church | The Sinner The poet reflects on his spiritual state, describing a struggle with weakness, sin, and the desire for divine alignment. The poem opens with the poet addressing God, expressing discomfort, likened to an ‘ague’ (fever or chill), when he searches his memory for spiritual treasures. This ‘ague’ suggests both a physical and spiritual unease, revealing the tension the poet feels in self-examination. The second line conveys a sense of regret as the poet searches for ‘treasur’d’ holiness in his memory. He recognizes that, although he might strive to keep his soul ‘even with the week’, dedicating every seventh day to God, he falls short. This phrase reflects the expectation to honour the Sabbath, but the poet’s efforts are met with disappointment in their perceived spiritual emptiness. The poet goes on to examine his inner self, describing ‘quarries of pil’d vanities’ that dominate his mind. Here, ‘quarries’ implies an overwhelming quantity of earthly or superficial concerns, while ‘vanities’ suggests that these concerns are meaningless in the context of divine expectation. In contrast, he finds only ‘shreds of holinesse’, fragmented attempts at righteousness, which he hesitates to bring forward as these elements are ‘crosse to thy decrees’, or in opposition to God’s laws. This imagery underscores the poet’s internal conflict and recognition of shortcomings. Further, the poet contrasts earth and heaven, saying that ‘the circumference earth is, heav’n the centre.’ This phrase symbolizes the poet’s focus on worldly concerns (the circumference) that orbit around a neglected spiritual core (the heavenly center). The poet reflects that his life is filled with ‘dregs’, the lesser, unrefined aspects of his being, while ‘quintessence’, or the purest part of himself, is scarce. This ‘quintessence’ is described as the ‘spirit and good extract’ of the poet’s heart, amounting to a ‘many hundredth part’ — a small fraction of life’s essence. The poet realizes that, despite attempts to cultivate holiness, his internal state largely lacks spiritual substance. The final lines shift to a plea for restoration. The poet calls on God to ‘restore thine image’, asking for renewal and transformation. This restoration request implies a yearning to reflect God’s nature more fully, as humanity is believed to be made in God’s image. The poet acknowledges that his heart ‘scarce… can grone’ to God, reflecting the difficulty he feels in truly connecting with or petitioning the divine. The poem ends with reference to the biblical account of the Ten Commandments, when God ‘didst write in stone’. This allusion serves as both a reminder of God’s past willingness to communicate directly and a plea for a similar intervention to etch divine law into the poet’s heart. The poem examines themes of introspection, human fallibility, and a longing for divine transformation. The poet’s self-examination reveals struggle to balance earthly concerns with spiritual commitments, culminating in a plea for God’s direct action to restore spiritual integrity.
Holy Saturday is unlike any other day in the liturgical year. It is a day suspended between death and life, darkness and light, silence and song. This ancient homily for Holy Saturday enters deeply into that liminal space—the moment when Christ, having died on the cross, descends to the realm of the dead. In doing so, it invites us into the mystery of the Harrowing of Hell: Christ’s triumphant entry into the underworld to liberate those held captive by death since the dawn of time [ … ]
