“You want to know why the city fell? Wait. Let me tell you about something else. There are two cities, built by two kinds of love. The earthly city was built by love of self carried to the point of contempt for God; the Heavenly City, by love of God carried to the point of contempt for self. The first glories in itself. The second glories in the power of the Lord.
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“Rome was only a home for countless human hearts. And every heart chose whom it would serve. As long as people loved not the city’s mighty walls or its seemingly limitless power, but God dwelling among them, the city stood. When that love ran dry and nothing remained but pride – everything collapsed in an instant.
“Twice over. The person who remembers his true Homeland takes better care of the roadside inn than the one who mistakes it for his final home. Longing for the Heavenly City neither abolishes nor destroys anything on which earthly life depends. We obey human ordinances in pursuit of peace on earth – provided they do not conflict with our faith.
“The question is not whether to love it, but how to love it rightly. Our citizenship is in heaven, says the Apostle, and from there we await the Savior. Remembering this does not mean despising the earth. It means refusing to demand from it what it could never give us in the first place – an unshakable foundation.
“There – now you see the difference. To enjoy something means to become attached to it in love as though it were an ultimate good. To use something means gratefully accepting what has been given to help you reach your final destination. If we wish to return to our Heavenly Homeland, where alone we can truly be happy, we must use this world rather than make it our ultimate delight.
“two forms of longing had converged there 65 years ago: love for one’s birthplace and the response to the call of the heavenly Father.
“Because we confuse temporary shelter with our true Homeland. As long as the traveler remembers where he is going, the collapse of a roadside inn is a tragedy – but not the end. He will find another place to spend the night. But the man who has nailed his bed to the floor and convinced himself there is nowhere else to go really does lose everything when the roof comes crashing down.