/lit/ - Literature

>>22627350
>>22627377
Anon, I'm hear to offer you the Good News: the Kingdom of Heaven is near. It lies within. You can stop striving after things, having your being conditional on the world. You can achieve mystical union with God, a greater joy, a belonging that makes you at home in the world. But to do so you must put away this wrath and other childish things. Seek God earnest. Pray. Undergo purgation, put that which you desire away from you until you are mature and resistant to all temptation. Then you shall know the higher things.

There are, I might add, women who have come to know these things. A teaching moment prehaps.

>>21677882
He respected the saints too, right?

Ironically, he lived at the same time as St. Therese of Lisieux, and there's even a record of them both staying at the same hotel one night in France.

>>18904716

I became Catholic because of the saints. So read some saints' lives.

I think Augustine would be especially relatable to the average 4channer. He was a smart but somewhat vain and lazy man (never learned Greek) who was addicted to sensual pleasures and dabbled in a weird Eastern religion. Then in his late 20s he started reading summaries of neo-Platonists, rented a villa with his mom and a couple of friends, and started seriously debating and pursuing philosophy in a really earnest but also dilettantish and naive fashion.

Then he realized the Christians were the only ones who weren't completely full of crap, abandoned everything, gave away his possessions, tried to live like a monk and was forced to become a bishop.

I can't pretend that my path here has been rational, like I was convinced by reading Dominican blogs or something. I think a lot of the words in John, "where else can we go, Lord? You have the words of eternal life."

I've been exposed to plenty of nonsense, hedonistic "Buddhists", psychedelic enthusiasts, etc. Only the Catholics are really legitimate. Except when they aren't, but even then they're bad in spite of their religion, never because of it. They're the only ones with a coherent theology and ecclesiology and the only ones who make real and difficult demands on your behavior.

Pic is another favorite saint, I love her because of her humility and struggles with atheism.