"Our hearts were made for You, O Lord, and they are restless until they rest in you." -- St. Augustine
Everyone knows about St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, in Africa. His "Confessions" is the first autobiography ever written, a soul-baring book, the first time a man wrote about himself as an individual. Historians say that for many centuries people did not think of themselves as individuals as we do but rather as members of a family, of a class, a guild perhaps, and members of the Church, (or of the Synagogue), though there were also heresies that people were often caught up in. The young Augustine was caught up in Manicheanism, but he did think of himself as an individual more like we do now than like others of his time.
He was born November 13, 354 A.D. at Tagaste, Numidia, North Africa (Souk-Ahras, Algeria) as Aurelius Augustinus. His parents were Patricius, a pagan, and Monica, a Christian. By years of prayer, St. Monica brought Patricius and Augustine to Christ. But it wasn't easy with Augustine, who led quite a dissolute life for a number of years. His mother had him "signed with the cross" (with chrism? by a bishop? The Catholic Encyclopedia doesn't make this clear) and she enrolled him in the catechumens. At one time he was sick and said he wanted to be baptised but then felt better and decided not to be. You won't be surprised to learn that St. Monica is the patron saint for disappointing children! Also difficult marriages, abuse victims, victims of infidelity, etc. She had a very difficult life. Yesterday was actually her feast day, maybe I'll write about her belatedly.
I should mention, for any non-Catholics reading this, that St. Aw-gus-TEEN is a city in Florida. The man's name is St. Aw-GUS-tin.
St. Monica's influence is described here:
"His association with "men of prayer" left three great ideas deeply engraven upon his soul: a Divine Providence, the future life with terrible sanctions, and, above all, Christ the Saviour.
"From my tenderest infancy, I had in a manner sucked with my mother's milk that name of my Saviour, Thy Son; I kept it in the recesses of my heart; and all that presented itself to me without that Divine Name, though it might be elegant, well written, and even replete with truth, did not altogether carry me away" (Confessions, I, iv)."Going off to college usually causes kids to go a litle wild, it certainly enabled Augustine to discover all sorts of sins:
"But a great intellectual and moral crisis stifled for a time all these Christian sentiments. The heart was the first point of attack. Patricius, proud of his son's success in the schools of Tagaste and Madaura determined to send him to Carthage to prepare for a forensic career. But, unfortunately, it required several months to collect the necessary means, and Augustine had to spend his sixteenth year at Tagaste in an idleness which was fatal to his virtue; he gave himself up to pleasure with all the vehemence of an ardent nature. At first he prayed, but without the sincere desire of being heard, and when he reached Carthage, towards the end of the year 370, every circumstance tended to draw him from his true course: the many seductions of the great city that was still half pagan, the licentiousness of other students, the theatres, the intoxication of his literary success, and a proud desire always to be first, even in evil. Before long he was obliged to confess to Monica that he had formed a sinful liaison with the person who bore him a son (372), "the son of his sin" — an entanglement from which he only delivered himself at Milan after fifteen years of its thralldom."
Many of you probably know that he prayed as a young man "Oh, Lord, give me chastity -- but not yet!"
For nine years he was caught up in the Manichean heresy. But he had a lot of questions about its teachings. He could find no science, no teaching about nature and its laws. They couldn't explain the movements of the stars, for example. They would tell him "Wait for Faustus, he can explain it." Finally, the great Manichean bishop, Faustus of Mileve, came to Carthage and Augustine saw him as a "cheap rhetorician" who knew nothing of science.
Augustine, now 29, left the Manicheans and Carthage and went to Rome. Things didn't go too well for him in Rome (too many toga parties?) but he was soon able to get a professorship in Milan and there he met Bishop Ambrose, now known as St. Ambrose, Bishop, Doctor of the Church. Augustine went to hear Bishop Ambrose preach regularly but it was three more years before he embraced the Faith. He was studying the philosophy of the Academics, reading Neo-Platonic philosophy, and otherwise (I think) looking for a way to live a good life without being a Christian.
Finally, at 33 he had an experience of grace that caused him to fall on the ground stunned in his garden in Milan. I'm annoyed that the Catholic Encyclopedia mentions it but doesn't explain it. As I recall, he heard a child singing and that somehow made everything clear to him about Faith.
I think that before he went into the garden was when he heard a voice say
"Tolle et lege – take it and read. He took up Sacred Scriptures and the page opened to a verse that applied perfectly to his past life <"Not in riots and drunken parties, not in eroticisms and indecencies, not in strife and rivalry, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in its lusts" (Romans 13:13-14)>. He received a decisive grace that completed his conversion. "
http://www.traditioninaction.org/SOD/saintsofday.htmMaybe someone else can fill us in on the rest of it?
So at last he was baptized, by Bishop Ambrose, at the church of St. John the Baptist in Milan. Augustine and his mother and son stayed in Milan for some time, then went on to Rome. St, Monica died in Ostia, near Rome. Augustine returned to Africa, where people insisted he become a priest. He had not planned to be ordained but he was drafted. He had already founded a monastery and now founded another. He began to preach against the heresy of Manicheanism which he had once embraced.
At 42, Augustine became Bishop of Hippo, and spent the rest of his life writing, preaching, and fighting heresies, of which there was a goodly supply to keep him busy: Manicheanism, Donatism, Pelagianism.
On August 28, 430 A.D., Augustine died, at the age of 76.
Here's a bit about his best-known books: "The Confessions" and "The City of God."
I'm thinking I ought to read them again, it's been a long time since I read them in college.
"The Confessions (towards A.D. 400) are, in the Biblical sense of the word confiteri, not an avowal or an account, but the praise of a soul that admires the action of God within itself. Of all the works of the holy Doctor none has been more universally read and admired, none has caused more salutary tears to flow. Neither in respect of penetrating analysis of the most complex impressions of the soul, nor communicative feeling, nor elevation of sentiment, nor depth of philosophic views, is there any book like it in all literature."
"In The City of God (begun in 413, but Books 20-22 were written in 426) Augustine answers the pagans, who attributed the fall of Rome (410) to the abolition of pagan worship. Considering this problem of Divine Providence with regard to the Roman Empire, he widens the horizon still more and in a burst of genius he creates the philosophy of history, embracing as he does with a glance the destinies of the world grouped around the Christian religion, the only one which goes back to the beginning and leads humanity to its final term.
The City of God is considered as the most important work of the great bishop. The other works chiefly interest theologians; but it, like the Confessions, belongs to general literature and appeals to every soul.
The Confessions are theology which has been lived in the soul, and the history of God's action on individuals, while The City of God is theology framed in the history of humanity, and explaining the action of God in the world."All quotes from
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02084a.htm
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