St. Augustine

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St. Augustine was born in 354 AD, in what is now known as Algeria. St. Monica, his mother, was a Christian, but his father was a Roman noble pagan. Whether it was his Mediterranean temperament, or his own tempestuous upbringing, his passionate personality is evident in his reflections. He wrote prolifically, and two of his works are considered classics, Confessions, and City of God. These works display his fervent zeal, whether it be for sin or sanctity. Perhaps for these reasons he remains so accessible and attractive; his life-long struggles between indulgent sensuality and disciplined righteousness, still resonate. Despite his later years of scholarship, prayer, and holiness, Augustine wrote of his youth with some anguish and resentment, pointing out how he still hated Homer due to the beatings he received trying to master Greek. These experiences of abuse, along with his years of head-long plunges into the lusts of his age, shaped Augustine almost as much as his mother’s heavenly pleadings. His mistresses, his son—Adeodatus, or “Gift from God—the seductions of the gladiatorial entertainments, and his intellectual foray into a great dualistic heresy, Manicheanism, all reveal the all-too familiar struggles of striving to live a balanced interior life. “I prayed for chastity,” Augustine opines, “I was bound down by this disease of the flesh. Its deadly pleasures were a chain that I dragged along with me, yet I was afraid to be freed from it…thus did I pray to God for chastity and continence, but not yet…”

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St. Augustine’s struggle between the world of sensual enslavements and the realm of austere harmonies took a fortuitous turn when he met and was befriended by the great St. Ambrose of Milan. “I was quite sure that it was better for me to give myself up to your love than to surrender to my own lust, “ he expressed to the Lord, “But while I wanted to follow the first course and was convinced that it was right, I was still a slave to the pleasures of the second.” Ambrose helped him to discover that the life of chastity and prayer was not only possible but preferable to living lustfully, but not by his own strength. Were he to cast his cares and weaknesses upon the Lord, however, he would find his power.  

One day, he heard a child’s voice say, “Take up and read. Take up and read.” So, he took up the Bible beside him and opened it at random. His eyes immediately fell upon these words of St Paul: “Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh” (Rm 13:13-14). In an instant, his heart was flooded with light, and he was filled with faith and love for God. He no longer lustfully desired a woman or any earthly pleasure but committed himself to loving and serving Jesus.

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St. Augustine proved in his weakness the maxim of St. Paul, “when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10). Chastity, indeed, all of the virtues, are possible with the Grace of Christ. If, however, we cast off the demands of our loving relationship with Him, there is nothing to prevent a downward slide into complete degradation. The West has rejected the laws of God and nature in a quest for human autonomy. In declaring ourselves ‘free from dictates of religion,’ we have forgotten what it means to be human. But as St. Augustine discovered, “To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement.”

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In his great work, City of God, Augustine explains that in the end, we only have but two choices, to live and die in the city of man, where we reject God for the disordered love of self; or, live and never die in the City of God, where we reject self for the rightly ordered love of God. Our strain, struggle, and failings shouldn’t deter us from following the same adventure of faith. Rather, let us discover as he did that our hearts, no matter how drenched in sin, are restless until they rest in Jesus.

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Let us close with these beautiful verses taken from his work, Confessions:

“Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.”