Fit for Sunday

I had never heard this bit from St. Augustine before--which, if you knew how much of St. Augustine I can claim to have read, would not surprise you at all, I am afraid. But having been introduced to the reflection in paragraph 4 below (starting with the sentence "Because of this. . .") I thought its profound beauty might strike some other readers, as it did me. Two of my favourite things to think about are the notion, the necessity of a thing growing to be exactly what it was made to be (a tall, tall order in the case of humankind, myself especially, if I can say that without sounding all Uriah Heepish), and the impression that, in such quidditas, "there lives the dearest freshness deep down things." A beauty surely worthy of loving.

"We are prohibited from loving the fault in it and are commanded to love its nature." Whew.