A Sweet Gift from Heaven

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Honey Harvest

“The heavenly gift of honey…” Virgil, The Georgics

Thus Virgil opens his final book of The Georgics. Perhaps these words rolled off his pen with hardly a thought; or maybe they were very deliberate. Either way they express a sentiment, an insight that can hardly be missed by an earnest observer of what nature offers… especially this time of year, via the bees.

Honey is a gift; and it is from heaven.

How can we not stop and smile? The beneficent order of the natural world is already so manifest in the diligence and efficacy with which this complex society brings about the pollination and thus the fruition and reproduction of countless plants and trees.

But then there is more. The bees’ work –which still today defies human comprehension—also yields the most regal of foods. Honey!

It comes in a panoply of colors and flavors, by which an experienced honey-taster might distinguish—like a wine-taster—the plants of origin. Spread thinly on a breakfast biscuit, muffin or toast, it starts our day with the sweet savor of honest work crowned by a gratuitous completion.

While the bees themselves likely think on nary more than their own work, we are left to ponder the gift itself, and its origin. And all that it implies.

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

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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