The Sabbath Which Hath No Evening

And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. GENESIS 2:2

The Confessions begins with a restless heart and ends with rest. After thirteen books — the story of a life, the long search through memory, the puzzle of time, the slow meditation on the days of creation — Augustine comes at last to the seventh day. Every other day in Genesis, he notices, has an evening and a morning. The seventh day has no evening. And he turns that detail into a prayer: “O Lord God, give peace unto us: (for Thou hast given us all things;) the peace of rest, the peace of the Sabbath, which hath no evening.” The first paragraph of the book said that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. The last pages show where that rest is finally found.

The rest that remains

Augustine reads the Sabbath of creation as a promise. God rested after His works, not because He was tired, but to tell us beforehand that we too, after our works in this life, “shall rest in Thee also in the Sabbath of eternal life.” All the good things of this world, he says, have their morning and their evening; they come to be and pass away. The eternal rest does not pass away.

There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. HEBREWS 4:9–10

And then he adds something unexpected. “For then shalt Thou rest in us, as now Thou workest in us.” Our rest in God will be God’s rest in us. The whole of the Christian life, on this view, is God working in us now, so that at the end He may rest in us for ever. It is a remarkable thought: heaven is not only our home in God, but God at home in us.

A foretaste at a window

Augustine had tasted something of this once, and he never forgot it. In Book IX he describes the evening at Ostia, shortly before his mother died, when the two of them stood at a window looking into a garden and talked together of what the eternal life of the saints would be. Their thoughts rose step by step above all bodily things, above sun and moon and stars. “We came to our own minds, and went beyond them,” he says, towards the Wisdom by whom all things are made. And for a moment, he says, “we slightly touched on her with the whole effort of our heart.” Then they sighed, and came back to the sound of their own voices, to words that have a beginning and an end.

He asks what it would be like if that moment were not taken away — if all the noise of the world fell silent, and every voice that passes, and God Himself spoke, not through anything created, but directly, and we heard Him and were caught up into joy. Would not that be, he asks, what the Lord meant when He said, Enter into thy Master’s joy?

His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord. MATTHEW 25:21

Seeing God

At the heart of Augustine’s hope was the vision of God. The Enchiridion says that we begin in faith and are made perfect by sight, and that the pure in heart will see that unspeakable beauty, the full vision of which is supreme happiness. Everything else in heaven — the absence of sorrow, the reunion with those we love, the resurrection of the body — flows from this. We shall see Him.

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. MATTHEW 5:8

Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. 1 JOHN 3:2

In the last chapter of The City of God he gathers it all up in words that have been remembered ever since: there we shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise. That is what shall be in the end without end. For what other end do we have, he asks, but to reach the kingdom that has no end?

Free at last

The Enchiridion adds two things that ought to comfort any struggling believer. The first is that the inner war will be over. In the resurrection, Augustine says, no part of our nature will be at odds with another, “but as we shall be free from enemies without, so we shall not have ourselves for enemies within.” The man who described his two wills tearing his soul apart in the garden at Milan looked forward, above all, to being whole.

The second concerns freedom. Some fear that in heaven, unable to sin, we shall be less free. Augustine says the opposite. In that life it will not be in our power to will evil, “and yet this will constitute no restriction on the freedom of his will. On the contrary, his will shall be much freer when it shall be wholly impossible for him to be the slave of sin.” True freedom is not the ability to choose ruin. It is the settled delight of a will that loves only good. God is supremely free, and He cannot sin.

And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads. And there shall be no night there. REVELATION 22:4–5

Living towards the Sabbath

The hope of this rest is not an escape from present duty. Augustine worked harder than almost anyone in his age. He preached, judged, wrote and cared for his people until the Vandals were at the gates. But he worked as a man who knew where the work was going. Every good work of ours, he says at the close of the Confessions, is God’s gift, and after it we hope to rest in His great hallowing. And he ends the book not with an argument but with an invitation to ask, seek and knock: what no man or angel can teach another, God alone will give to those who ask Him.

As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness. PSALM 17:15

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Keep one day this week as a real Sabbath — a day of worship and rest — and treat it as a foretaste of the rest to come.

2. Think about what you most look forward to in heaven. Is it God Himself? Ask Him to make it so.

3. When the inner war with sin wearies you, remind yourself of the day when you will not have yourself for an enemy within.

4. Read Revelation 21:1–7 and 22:1–5 slowly, and give thanks for what is promised.

5. Consider whether your hope of heaven makes you idle or faithful. Choose one task you will do this week as work offered towards that rest.

A PRAYER

Lord God, give us peace, the peace of rest, the peace of the Sabbath which has no evening.

Work in me now, that You may rest in me for ever. Make me pure in heart, that I may see You.

When I am weary of the war within, remind me that the day is coming when I shall be whole and free.

Bring me at last to the place where we shall rest and see, see and love, love and praise, in the end that has no end. Amen.