Laudator Temporis Acti

Augustine, Sermons 335C.8 (C. Lambot, "Nouveau sermon de S. Augustin pour la fête d'un martyr," Revue Bénédictine 46 [1934] 398-409 [at 401-402]; tr. Edmund Hill):

You know, dearly beloved, on what advice people greedy for money act, when they see they have accumulated an amount of coins. What do they say? "The thing's round, it rolls, it vanishes; it must be tied up with some purchase of real estate." And they want to tie their money up by buying a country house. And hey, presto, they've bought a house in the country, they will have a house in the country. Will the country house, though, always have them? But neither will they have it always, seeing that after a short while they will move on without any deferment. You can't tie up your soul to the place where you've tied up your money. The time will come, you see, when your soul will be required of you; what you have bought, whose will it be then?" So you won't have the country house, and the house in the country won't have you, except perhaps as regards your body, if you're buried there when you're dead. Why, then indeed somehing wonderful happens; it will have you, you won't have it.

Nostis, carissimi, quo consilio agant cupidi pecuniae quando vident se aliquid nummorum habere. Quid dicunt? "Rotunda est res, volvitur, perit, aliqua possessionis emptione liganda est". Et volunt ligare pecuniam suam emendo villam. Et ecce emerunt villam, habebunt villam. Numquid eos semper habebit villa? Sed nec ipsi habebunt unde post modicum tempus sine dilatione migrabunt. Ubi ligasti pecuniam tuam, ligare ibi non potes animam tuam. Veniet enim tempus quando reposcetur a te anima tua. Quod emisti, cuius erit? Ergo nec villam habebis, nec villa te habebit, nisi forte secundum corpus ibi fueris mortuus sepultus. Fit enim tunc mirum aliquid: ipsa te habebit, tu illam non habebis.

I don't have access to François Dolbeau, "Le s. Lambot 2 (335 C): un sermon d'Augustin prêché à Carthage pour la fête du martyr Salvius?" Revue d'Études Augustiniennes et Patristiques 70.1 (2024) 85-111.