The sum of all we have said since we began to speak of things thus comes to this: it is to be understood that the plenitude and the end of the Law and of all the sacred Scriptures is the love of a Being which is to be enjoyed and of a being that can share that enjoyment with us, since there is no need for a precept that anyone should love himself. That we might know this and have the means to implement it, the whole temporal dispensation was made by divine Providence for our salvation. We should use it, not with an abiding but with a transitory love and delight like that in a road or in vehicles or in other instruments, or, if it may be expressed more accurately, so that we love those things by which we are carried along for the sake of that toward which we are carried.

Whoever, therefore, thinks that he understands the divine Scriptures or any part of them so that it does not build the double love of God and of our neighbor does not understand it at all…  (Augustine, On Christian Teaching, 1.35.39-36.40)

Since God accepts repentance after sin, if each one knew at what time he would depart from this world, he would be able to select a time for pleasure and another time for repentance. But the one who promised pardon to a person who repents did not promise us a tomorrow… (Gregory the Great, Hom. 10)