After some time, I reread the Aeneid  (Gredos, 1992) by Virgil (70-19 BC), a great poet of Latin letters. Ronald Knox (1888-1957) recounts his conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism in his book A Spiritual Aeneid. His spiritual journey is not an Odyssey, it is an Aeneid, since the place of arrival is Eternal Rome, not the Anglican home in which he was raised. This is the meaning of Virgil’s Aeneid itself: Aeneas, a survivor of the destruction of Troy, sets out with the objects of worship and the Penates of his home, in search of the great enclosure that he will found, “after wandering the sea.”

Aeneas must fulfill his destiny, and not even Dido’s love can stop him. The gods have entrusted him with his mission. He tells Dido: “Right now, the messenger of the gods, whom Jupiter himself has just sent me—I swear by your life and mine—has come down to convey his command to me through the flying auras. I myself have seen the god enter through the walls in broad daylight and have inhaled his words with my own ears (…). I am not going to Italy of my own free will.” Aeneas must fulfill his mission, reach Italy, and found Rome, as his father Anchises reminds him: “You, Roman, remember your mission: to govern the peoples with your command. These will be your arts: to impose laws of peace, to grant your favor to the humble, and to strike down the proud in battle.” Aeneas has his mission, and each of us, likewise, has our own mission, a task not sought but delivered by another, challenging us to integrate the given task into our personal life project: mission and life project are intertwined.
Theodor Haecker, whom I have referred to in other posts on this blog, considers Virgil to be the father of the West ( Virgil. Father of the West . EPESA, 1945), since in his Bucolics, Georgics, and, in particular, in the Aeneid, the naturally Christian soul of the Latin poet and thinker appears. The Aeneid conveys a way of understanding the human being in his constants throughout history. We accompany the Latin hero in his tears and sorrows at the destruction of Troy, the death of his father and friends, and in the hope of finding new lands and a new home. This is the hero fulfilling his destiny and seeking the human glory characteristic of ancient Greco-Roman culture. A prelude, Haecker will say, to the Christian saint who weaves freedom and Providence in his biography, seeking the glory of God.

Haecker’s reflection on work, in reference to Virgil, is very suggestive. He notes: “Who in antiquity could have written the maxim:  Labor vincit omnia, labor improbus : ‘Work conquers all things, labor by the sweat of one’s brow’; in antiquity, in an economy based on slavery, when every nobleman saw something noble only in otium and not in negotium, when no one even considered the possibility of modern error, which considers work, in itself, a kind of religion? No Greek, no seafaring people, no trading people or people devoted to plunder, or even warriors or shepherds, but only an agricultural people, could arrive at a full understanding of the essence of work (p. 85).” Labor, on the one hand, and hard work, on the other.
“In Aeneas, there is something completely new,” Haecker continues, “that distinguishes him from all the Homeric heroes: he must fulfill a mission, and he knows he must fulfill it. It is true that he does not know how, and only obscurely, all of its content; but he knows unshakeably, with a certainty that is at once tormenting and anguishing, yet sublime and happy, that he must (p. 114).” It is life itself, with its tasks and projects; burdens and joys, and how good it is that we do not lose sight of the blue sky amidst the toils of each day.