What does it mean to face trial, loss, and even evil without doubt? In today’s readings, the Church speaks with three voices across centuries to answer that question. In The Shepherd of Hermas, the vision of the terrifying beast reveals that coming tribulation is real, overwhelming, and unavoidable—but not ultimate; deliverance comes not through escape, but through steadfast faith that refuses to doubt God even when destruction seems imminent. Augustine, in The Confessions, brings that trial inward, recounting the shattering grief of losing his closest friend and the way sorrow exposed how deeply his heart had fastened itself to a creature rather than to God; his suffering becomes a mirror revealing the disorder of love that only God can heal. Aquinas then provides the theological clarity beneath both experiences, explaining that God knows evil not as a thing He causes or delights in, but as a privation known through His perfect knowledge of the good, and that God knows singular events, losses, and trials—not vaguely or generally, but distinctly, eternally, and without confusion. Together, these readings move from vision, to wound, to wisdom—showing that faith, grief, and divine knowledge are not separate paths, but one coherent journey toward trusting the God who knows all things without being darkened by them.

Readings: The Shepherd of Hermas — Vision 4–5

Augustine, The Confessions — Book 4, Chapter 4 (Sections 7–9)

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica — Part 1, Question 14 (Articles 10–12 Combined)

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In today’s readings, we watch Augustine slowly being cornered by the truth—resisting superstition on moral grounds while still clinging to astrology as an intellectual refuge—until the deeper issue is exposed: any system that removes moral responsibility ultimately makes God the author of sin, and that lie cannot stand before the God who “repays each according to his works” and delights in a contrite heart (Psalm 51:17; Romans 2:6). His rejection of the soothsayer was real, but incomplete; his rejection of astrology would require something stronger than persuasion—it would require certainty. Aquinas supplies that certainty from another angle, teaching that God’s knowledge extends even to things that are not: not as existing realities, but as possibilities, pasts, futures, and privations, all known through His own essence without confusing non-being with being. Together, these readings dismantle fatalism from both directions—pastoral and metaphysical—showing that God’s sovereign knowledge grounds reality without excusing sin, and that freedom is preserved not by ignorance in God, but by His perfect knowledge ordered to truth (Isaiah 46:9–10).

Readings: Augustine, The Confessions — Book 4, Chapter 2 (Section 3) Augustine, The Confessions — Book 4, Chapter 3 (Sections 4–6) Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica — Part 1, Question 14, Article 9

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In today’s readings, we are forced to reckon with a sobering truth: what God builds, He builds deliberately—and not every stone remains fit for the tower. Hermas presses the warning home through the vision of the Church rising stone by stone, showing how faith, repentance, discipline, and even suffering determine whether a life is shaped for the structure or set aside, reminding us that delay hardens as surely as rejection. Augustine then exposes a quieter danger, confessing how he despised superstition on the surface while still feeding the demons beneath it, revealing how easily moral restraint can masquerade as spiritual devotion when love for God is absent (Isaiah 44:20). Aquinas completes the movement by lifting us into divine causality itself, teaching that God’s knowledge is not a passive awareness of reality but the very cause of all that exists—joined to His will, ordering even contingent things without destroying their freedom (Acts 17:28).

Readings: The Shepherd of Hermas — Vision 3 (Chapters 5–8) Augustine, The Confessions — Book 4, Chapter 2 (Sections 2–3) Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica — Part 1, Question 14, Article 8

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