"Our end is not an earthly city"

I thought this was a good short piece by Father Schall, clarifying the proper perspective of politics and human work within what St. Augustine referred to as the ordo amoris. Here are the concluding paragraphs:

This intercession seems ambiguous. We can say, with Aristotle, that man is by nature a political animal. This would mean that the city and its proper building is a task we ought to achieve, but it is not the highest thing. That city ought to be built in such a way that, within its confines, we can practice human virtue in such a way that we control our vices. Scripture seems to present politics as a zone that, at its best, leaves us alone to achieve our final end, which is not political.

Whenever building the earthly city becomes our chief purpose, we are close to the neo-absolutism that elevates the earthly city to be itself the city of God. This temptation to reverse the priority of the city of God so that it becomes identical with the city of man is very contemporary. This reversal comes about most often when we want to find no intelligence in nature but our own. This leaves us free to construct our own "city" that has no reference to any transcendent end of each created person, no matter what regime or era in which he exists.

The final intercession reads: "Grant joy and peace to us and to all we meet this day." We can ask this in any earthly city, even the worst, because our end is not an earthly city.