Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy 5.34

“Thus, therefore, mortal men have their freedom of judgment intact. And since their wills are freed from all binding necessity, laws do not set rewards or punishments unjustly. 

 

“God is ever the constant foreknowing overseer, and the ever-present eternity of His sight moves in harmony with the future nature of our actions, as it dispenses rewards to the good, and punishments to the bad. 

 

“Hopes are not vainly put in God, nor prayers in vain offered: if these are right, they cannot but be answered. 

 

“Turn therefore from vice and ensue virtue; raise your soul to upright hopes; send up on high your prayers from this earth. 

 

“If you would be honest, great is the necessity enjoined upon your goodness, since all you do is done before the eyes of an all-seeing Judge.”

 

—from Book 5, Prose 6

 

Finding myself at the last lines of the Consolation is always bittersweet for me. How could one possibly end this journey? Exactly in this way, with only a few words, charged with a life-changing meaning. 

 

Boethius would go off to die soon after he wrote this passage, and it is said that he died in quite a brutal manner. 

 

Well, I too will go off to die soon, as we all will, whatever the degree of final suffering. What will matter for me is what I did with all the circumstances of my life, both the pleasant and the painful, and whether I chose to make use of those experiences for the better or for the worse. 

 

I am tempted to write pages upon pages of further reflections here, but Boethius has already written enough, and I have already scribbled down far too much. In brief, what have I learned? 

 

I know that the Universe is not ruled by randomness or chance, since nothing comes from nothing. I also know that wherever there is more or less of anything, there must be an Absolute Something. 

 

I then know that nothing is outside of the consciousness and power of the Divine, and that Providence orders all things rightly, even when I do not see it at the time. 

 

I then know that living by Nature will always distribute justice, while living by Fortune will always bring restlessness; I will understand this when I perceive where the true human good is to be found. 

 

I then know that it is eminently reasonable to trust in God, to be open to grace, and to reach out in prayer. This is not a matter of wishful thinking or blind superstition, but rather an expression of the unity of all things, the lesser informed by the greater. 

 

I then know that my own freedom is made to work within the whole, not against it. The difference between my own virtue and vice will be the difference between my own happiness and misery. 

 

In all of this, I do not need to fight with anyone, or be consumed by jealousy and resentment, or succumb to despair, or demand anything that Nature has not already provided for me. I can find peace in the exercise of my own character, safe in the awareness that this precisely why I was created. 

 

This is how one particular volume ends; it is now up to me to take what I have learned, and to put it into practice. 

 

Nothing noble is ever in vain. 

Written in 2/2016