In his letters, Saint Augustine tells a wonderful story of the physician Sennadius, who believed that since man was flesh, a future life could not exist for him after death. How to argue with that?
An angel appeared to Sennadius in a dream one night, and led him to the outskirts of the city. There Sennadius heard a veritable concert of heavenly music. But where was it coming from? “From the voices of spirits made perfect,” the angel explained. But of course this was only a dream, and when Sennadius awoke he dismissed it as such. After all, he was a man of science, an intellectual. What did dreams have to do with reality?
A few nights later, the angel returned to Sennadius in a second dream. “Tell me, Sennadius, when did you experience hearing that celestial music?” the angel asked this time. “While you were awake or while you were sleeping?”
Sennadius answered that he was asleep when he heard the music.
“So you did not experience the music with the bodily senses,” the angel prodded. “In other words, you did not hear it with your ears.”
The great physician agreed this was true.
“When, therefore, your body sleeps, something other may be awake. And when your body dies, that something other may live on. Think of these things, Sennadius.” With his point made, the angel vanished. I bet the physician woke a different man the next morning.
