"I have seen all the works which have been done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and striving after wind." (Ecclesiastes 2)

I have been re-reading Augustine's Confessions, and am struck in a new way by its excellence. As I observe the follies of loving this life falling from Augustine as he approaches Faith in God, I am convicted of my own faulty and misguided loves.

How foolish, though, to love more or as much as God any earthly thing. Surely we cannot think that ambition, pleasure, or anything else that a gracious God has given us can be worth our pursuing it for its own sake? When considered, only a righteous and transcendent God, whose love and goodness are never changing and never ending, can be the proper life-pursuit of any man or woman.

"Vanity of vanities," says the Preacher,
"Vanity of vanities! All is vanity." (Ecclesiastes 1:2)

Augustine uses the example of a begger when confessing to God his own follies in this area. He was on his way to being a member of the Imperial court, or some other such exalted earthly position. In order to fulfill this desire, in order to become a recognized and worth-while Roman individual, he had to give a speech on the Emperor. However, he did not find there the happiness which he sought. Here is the text, which is addressing God:

How unhappy I was, and how conscious you made me of my misery, on that day when I was preparing to deliver a panegyric on the emperor! In the course of it I would tell numerous lies and for my mendacity would win the good opinion of people who knew it to be untrue. The anxiety of the occasion was making my heart palpitate and perspire with the destructive fever of the worry, when I passed through a Milan street and noticed a destitute beggar. Already drunk, I think, he was joking and laughing. I groaned and spoke with the friends accompanying me about the many sufferings that result from our follies. In all our strivings such as those efforts that were then worrying me, the goads of ambition impelled me to drag the burden of my unhappiness with me, and in dragging it to make it even worse; yet we hade no goal other than to reach a carefree cheerfulness. That beggar was already there before us, and perhaps we would never achieve it. For what he had gained with a few coins, obtained by begging, that is the cheerfulness of temporal felicity, I was going about to reach by painfully twisted and roundabout ways. True joy he had not. But my quest to fulfil my ambitions was much falser. there was no question that he was happy and I racked with anxiety. He had no worries; I was frenetic, and if anyone had asked me if I would prefer to be merry or to be racked with fear, I would have answered 'to be merry'. Yet if he asked whether I would prefer to be a beggar like that man or the kind of person I then was, I would have chosen to be myself, a bundle of anxieties and fears. What an absurd choice!

(Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick. VI. vi (9-10))

Augustine made an absurd choice, true, but I do not think that happiness is an absurd desire. All men desire it more than any other thing on this earth, if one would consider themselves. And that is why we can understand Augustine here, we are all yearning for the same thing he was, in different ways, and are mostly failing to accomplish it. For, temporal felicity this happiness we want is not (for this pleasurable feeling will end), rather, it is the perfect state of the soul that is found through loving God and serving Him always. And that can only be found by prostrating oneself before our Savior, who has offered Grace freely to those who ask of Him, because of a love so deep that He left Heaven, putting off his rightful Glory as God, and dying on the cross for our sins.

"The conclusion, when all has been heard, is: fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person. For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil." (Ecclesiastes 12:13-12:14)