While writing to his friend Marquianas, Augustine recalls a time much earlier, a time in his youth,

when Augustine says of himself, I was a flame with desire for this world's empty show.

Augustine wrote this letter to Marquianas as his life was drawing to a close.

He gives us as he so often does such a memorable expression when he writes of this world's

empty show.

As that, with what he pursued instead, which was a kingdom without end.

Augustine wrote of this never-ending kingdom in the city of God.

He was 71 years old when he finished the city of God.

Today, life expectancy in the United States is right around 79 years old, but back in

the 400s, and Augustine's time, it was around 35.

The Romans took census data and kept careful records.

Augustine made it to their 30s, a few made it into their 40s, but very, very few made

it to the decades beyond, and here's Augustine, living all of 76 years.

He wrote often of old age and of death, and one of his last letters, he was responding

to an invitation to speak at a dedication of a church building.

He regretfully begged off that request.

He said if he were a younger man, he would do it.

He even said that if it wasn't winter, he would do it.

But he was old, and it was winter, and he was simply too feeble to attempt the trip.

He writes, I would drag my poor body to you with willingness, were it not detained by weakness.

Augustine's earthly tent, as Paul put it, was wearing and fading and winding down.

Well, so too was the Roman Empire, we might recall that a young Augustine was consumed

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