Of God’s Blessings: From “The City of God” by Saint Augustine of Hippo (vegetarian), Part 1 of 2

Saint Augustine of Hippo was an esteemed late 4th and early 5th century Christian bishop in present-day Algeria. Among his most significant writings are “The City of God,” “De Doctrina Christiana” and “Confessions.” The respected bishop was also a compassionate vegetarian, and drew attention to the lifestyle of those who “not only abstain from flesh and wine, but also from other viands. … which flatter taste.” Today, it is our pleasure to present excerpts from Saint Augustine’s “The City of God,” where the wise Bishop speaks of a forever Heavenly abode in God’s Love.

“As we now see in Christ the fulfillment of that which God promised to Abraham when He said, ‘In thy seed shall all nations be blessed,’ so this also shall be fulfilled which He promised when He said ‘There shall be a new Heaven and a new Earth: and the former shall not be mentioned, nor come into mind; but they shall find joy and rejoicing in it: for I will make Jerusalem a rejoicing, and my people a joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in my people, and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her.’”

“And the very manner in which the world’s faith was won is found to be even more incredible if we consider it. Men uninstructed in any branch of a liberal education, without any of the refinement of heathen learning, unskilled in grammar, not armed with dialectic, not adorned with rhetoric, but plain men, and very few in number, these were the men whom Christ sent with the nets of faith to the sea of this world, and thus took out of every race so many fishes, and even the philosophers themselves, wonderful as they are rare.”

“Whatever, therefore, has been taken from the body, either during life or after death shall be restored to it, transformed from the oldness of the animal body into the newness of the spiritual body, and clothed in incorruption and immortality. And a man is in this life spiritual in such a way, that he is yet earthly with respect to his body, and sees another law in his members warring against the law of his mind; but even in his body he will be spiritual when the same flesh shall have had that resurrection of which these words speak, ‘It is sown an animal body, it shall rise a spiritual body.’”