The Heart, in Suffering

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“Some day, perhaps, remembering even this
Will be a pleasure.”
Virgil, The Aeneid, I

Aeneas and his men have endured much since leaving Troy. And of course they left only after the destruction of all they knew and loved in a flaming inferno of death.

Now they’ve been shipwrecked in a strange land. What does a captain say to his men?

Some day, perhaps, remembering even this
Will be a pleasure.

Few words, perhaps, have ever sent more of shiver down the spine of Western Civilization.

Far from an unfeeling, or nihilistic, or even jaded utterance, these words express the true heart of a man struggling to maintain his confidence in the divine plan for him. In the midst of intense suffering.

Such a supple and faithful attitude in suffering can be maintained. It has been done. And it can be our purpose to do it again.

A fuller reflection on this astounding text is at Aleteia.

Virgil (70-19 B.C.) is the great Roman poet, author of The Aeneid and The Georgics. In the Divine Comedy Virgil appears as Dante’s guide through hell and purgatory.

This Wednesday Quotation and reflection originally posted at Bacon from Acorns.

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John A. Cuddeback is a professor and chairman of the Philosophy Department at Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia, where he has taught since 1995. He received a Ph.D. in Philosophy from The Catholic University of America under the direction of F. Russell Hittinger. He has lectured on various topics including virtue, culture, natural law, friendship, and household. His book Friendship: The Art of Happiness was republished in 2010 as True Friendship: Where Virtue Becomes Happiness. His writings have appeared in Nova et Vetera, The Thomist, and The Review of Metaphysics, as well as in several volumes published by the American Maritain Association. Though raised in what he calls an ‘archetypical suburb,’ Columbia, Maryland, he and his wife Sofia consider themselves blessed to be raising their six children in the shadow of the Blue Ridge on the banks of the Shenandoah. At the material center of their homesteading projects are heritage breed pigs, which like the pigs of Eumaeus are fattened on acorns, yielding a bacon that too few people ever enjoy. His website dedicated to the philosophy of family and household is baconfromacorns.com.

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