Augustine on Love and Lust

Who might have tempered my misery, turned to good use the fleeting beauties of those lowest things, and put limits to their delights, so that youth's flood might have spent itself on the shore of married life, if rest in such pleasures could not be gained by the end of begetting children, as your law, O Lord, prescribes? Even so do you fashion the offspring of our mortality, for you have power to stretch forth a gentle hand and soften those thorns that had no place in your paradise. For your omnipotence is not far from us, even when we are far from you. Or I might have listened more heedfully to your voice as it sounded from the clouds: "Nevertheless, such shall have tribulation of the flesh. But I spare you." "It is good for a man not to touch a woman." And again: "He that is without a wife is solicitous for the things that belong to God, how he may please God. But he that is with a wife is solicitous for the things of this world, how he may please his wife." I should have listened more heedfully to these words, and having thus been made a eunuch for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, I would have looked with greater joy to your embraces.

But I, poor wretch, foamed over: I followed after the sweeping tide of passions and I departed from you. I broke all your laws, but I did not escape your scourges. What mortal man can do that? You were always present to aid me, merciful in your anger, and charging with the greatest bitterness and disgust all my unlawful pleasures, so that I might seek after pleasure that was free from disgust, to the end that, when I could find it, it would be in none but you, Lord, in none but you. For you fashion sorrow into a lesson to us. You smite so that you may heal. You slay us so that we may not die apart from you.

 

From The Confessions of St. Augustine (Translated by John K. Ryan) Book 2; Chapter 2; Paragraphs 3-4