When the Head and members are despised, then the whole Christ is despised, for the whole Christ, Head and body, is that just man against whom deceitf… - Augustine of Hippo

Day after day I postponed living in you, but I never put off the death which I died each day in myself. I longed for a life of happiness but I was frightened to approach it in its own domain; and yet, while I fled from it, I still searched for it.

We made bad use of immortality, and so ended up dying; Christ made good use of mortality, so that we might end up living.

So it falls out that in this world, in evil days like these, the Church walks onward like a wayfarer stricken by the world's hostility, but comforted by the mercy of God. Nor does this state of affairs date only from the days of Christ's and His Apostles' presence on earth. It was never any different from the days when the first just man, Abel, was slain by his ungodly brother. So shall it be until this world is no more.