“No one can cross the sea of this world unless carried over it on the cross of Christ” by Augustine of Hippo (A.D. 354-430)

“It is as if someone could see his home country from a long way away, but is cut off from it by the sea; he sees where to go, but does not have the means to get there.

In the same way all of us long to reach that secure place of ours where that which is is, because it alone always is as it is. But in between lies the sea of this world through which we are going, even though we already see where we are going (many, however, do not see where they are going).

Thus, so that we might also have the means to go, the One we were longing to go came here from there. And what did He make? A wooden raft for us to cross the sea on.

For no one can cross the sea of this world unless carried over it on the cross of Christ.

Sometimes even someone of ailing eyes embraces this cross: may the one who does not see from afar where he is going not let go of the cross, and it will take him to that destination.”

—Saint Augustine, Homilies on the Gospel of John 1–40, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald and Boniface Ramsey, trans. Edmund Hill, vol. 12, The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2009), 56–57. (2.2)