When sorrow presses too near, both body and soul cry out for healing.

Today’s readings trace how suffering, creation, and restoration weave together through the Fathers. In Summa Theologica (1–2.37.1), I consider how sorrow clouds the intellect—drawing the soul inward until it cannot freely learn. Yet when grief is rightly ordered by charity, it may humble rather than darken, cleansing the mind for truth.

In The Confessions, Book 13, Chapter 33 (48), I rejoice that all creation, though made from nothing, praises God through its very limits. The heavens and earth—rising and fading, forming and dissolving—proclaim His beauty as beginning and end.

And in The Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 9, Chapters 6–10, I watch the tower of the Church examined and rebuilt. Stones once dark are cut, cleansed, and restored; others wait beside the wall until the Master calls them home. In the end, the tower gleams like one living stone—firm, whole, and shining in repentance.

Readings:

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part 1–2, Question 37, Article 1

Augustine, The Confessions, Book 13, Chapter 33 (48)

Hermas, The Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 9, Chapters 6–10

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