St. Michael's Lent 2026 - Reading #3 - Vigilance
Reading
What madness entrusts a city to gods Virgil himself calls conquered?
"If, then, Virgil says that the gods were such as these, and were conquered, and that when conquered they could not escape except under the protection of a man, what madness is it to suppose that Rome had been wisely entrusted to these guardians, and could not have been taken unless it had lost them! Indeed, to worship conquered gods as protectors and champions, what is this but to worship, not good divinities, but evil omens?"
A watchman leans on ramparts that have already failed elsewhere — or he does not.
Augustine answers the poets: "Would it not be wiser to believe, not that Rome would never have fallen into so great a calamity had not they first perished, but rather that they would have perished long since had not Rome preserved them as long as she could? For who does not see, when he thinks of it, what a foolish assumption it is that they could not be vanquished under vanquished defenders, and that they only perished because they had lost their guardian gods, when, indeed, the only cause of their perishing was that they chose for their protectors gods condemned to perish? The poets, therefore, when they composed and sang these things about the conquered gods, had no intention to invent falsehoods, but uttered, as honest men, what the truth extorted from them."
Name the conquered gods in your own line.
Reflection
Every man has a garrison — the set of things he actually trusts to hold his life together when pressure comes. Look at yours honestly. The salary. The portfolio. Your own competence, your health, your network, your reputation for having it handled. None of these are evil, but every one of them is a conquered god: each has already failed other men exactly like you, and each will eventually be carried out of the fire rather than carry you. A watchman who leans his weight on a rampart that has already collapsed elsewhere is not vigilant. He is sentimental.
Three days into the watch, do the reconnaissance. Name the conquered gods in your own defensive line — the things you would panic to lose because you have quietly asked them to save you. Then reassign the post.
Your household needs its trust anchored to the one Defender who has never lost.