It’s also the Feast Day of Saint Augustine. He is one of the most interesting and influential people who have been followers of Christ. He lived from 354-430 B.C. And he became a Christian at age 31.
He was born in North Africa when it was part of the Roman Empire, an Empire making the transition to a “Christian Empire,” after Constantine declared that Rome wouldn’t be killing Christians anymore, and in fact, if you wanted to get ahead in politics, you might want to look into becoming one. He was likely of the ethnicity of the people who would eventually be called Berbers.
Augustine’s mother was a Christian, his father a pagan. He learned early on that he had a gift for oratory, and he became a student and later a teacher of rhetoric. He also learned he liked the company of women. He had kept a mistress for many years, with whom he had a son. He grew up thinking the Christian faith to the refuge of imbeciles and superstitious ninnies (with the exception of his mother), and preferred the more exclusive, high-sounding teachings of the group called the Manicheans. They had secret knowledge that had to be worked for and wrestled with – not this ‘gospel for all’ the Christians preached.
Through the good preaching and good company of a bishop named Ambrose, Augustine slowly came around to the idea that you could be smart and a Christian, as well as the realization that the Manicheans were full of crap, to use a theological term.
But an intellectual conversion isn’t a full conversion – knowing all the right answers had always been important for Augustine, but God had more in store for him. At a moment of great personal crisis, he heard the voice of a child singing ‘Take up and read.’ So he picked up his copy of Paul’s letter to the Romans, and did the thing that Bible teachers, myself included, tell you not to do, which is just open it up randomly and see what it says. He opened to Romans 13:13-14 “13Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. 14Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature.” He says in his Confessions, “No further would I read; nor needed I: for instantly at the end of this sentence, as if before a peaceful light streaming into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away.”
He and his son were baptized by Ambrose on Easter Sunday the next year.
He became a priest, then a bishop in the North African town of Hippo. He wrote a LOT. Confessions, his most famous work, is often credited as the first autobiography, or at least the first spiritual autobiography. And he was no slouch as a philosopher. A good chunk of Confessions is his philosophy of the nature of time, and how our perception of it entirely depends on the nature of human memory. I told you he was smart.
He has been described as the last of the great ancient thinkers, and the first great medieval thinker. He wasn’t perfect, even after his conversion. You might find things objectionable about his theology, his harsh approach to heretics, his theory of just war, or other things. But the beautiful thing about Augustine is that he admitted he wasn’t perfect. He wrote a book about the topic, as a matter of fact.
Augustine is the patron saint of brewers, printers, theologians, Bridgeport, Connecticut, and yes, St. Augustine, Florida. He is often symbolized in iconography by a pierced heart. And my favorite band wrote this song about him.
August 28th is his feast day because, like all saints, it is the day that he died. It is cause for feasting, not mourning, for he is with the One he loves, and we anticipate the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead.
And at the risk of making this post way too long, some of my favorite parts of Confessions, with my comments in parentheses:
“You have made us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it finds rest in You.”
“It is not the infant’s will that is harmless, but the weakness of infant limbs.” (All the parents holla back!)
On the untimely death of his best friend: “My heart was made dark by sorrow, and whatever I looked upon was death. Whatever I had done together with him was, apart from him, turned into a cruel torture. I hated all things, because they no longer held him.”
“Unless we could weep into Your ears, no trace of hope would remain for us.”
“To me then You were not what You are, but an empty phantom, and my error was my god.”
“Blessed is the man who loves You, and his friend in You, and his enemy for Your sake.”
“More beautiful than all those things I desired to know is the modest mind that admits its own limitations.”
“Manners I did not want for myself as a student I was forced to endure in others when I became a teacher.” (All the teachers holla back!)
“That sin was the more incurable where I judged myself to be no sinner.”
“I did not think it possible to defend the things in Your Scriptures to which men had objected. Sometimes I desired greatly to discuss individual points with someone highly trained in those books and find out what he thought of them. [The Manicheans] would assert that the New Testament writings were falsified by some unknown persons who wished to implant foreign ideas into the Christian faith. However, they themselves did not produce any uncorrupted copies.” (There is nothing new under the sun.)
On Ambrose: “I began to love him, at first not as a teacher of truth, which I utterly despaired of finding in Your Church, but as a man who was kindly disposed toward me.”
On preparing a speech in praise of the emperor: “In it I would tell many a lie, and for my lies I would be applauded by men who knew that I was lying.”
“Just as fawning friends pervert us, so also quarrelsome enemies often correct us.”
“Caught fast in a disease of the flesh and its deadly sweetness, I dragged along my chains and was fearful of being loosed from them.”
“I asked, ‘What is iniquity?’ and I found that it is not a substance. It is perversity of will, twisted away from the supreme substance, You, O God.”
“I sought for a way of gaining strength sufficient for me to have joy in You, but I did not find it until I embraced ‘the mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus,' who is over all things, God blessed forever.” (1 Tim. 2:5, Romans 9:5)
At one point, Augustine prayed the most honest, hilarious prayer ever: “Give me chastity and continence – but not yet!”
“The unlearned rise up and take heaven by storm, and we, with all our erudition but empty of heart - see how we wallow in flesh and blood! Are we ashamed to follow, because they have gone on ahead of us?”
On remembering: “Men go forth to marvel at the mountain heights, at huge waves in the sea, at the broad expanse of flowing rivers, at the wide reaches of the ocean, and at the circuits of the stars, but themselves they pass by.”
“What thing within me could be hidden from You, even if I would not confess it to You? I would be hiding You from myself, not myself from You.”
On Jesus: “For us, He is before You both victor and victim, and therefore victor for the reason that He is victim.”
“Your best servant is he who looks not so much to hear from You what he wants to hear, but rather to want what he hears from You.”
“You first healed me from the passion for self-vindication, so that You might also forgive all my other iniquities.”
“I can find no safe place for my soul except in You. In You may my scattered longings be gathered together, and from You may no part of me ever depart. Sometimes You admit me in my innermost being into a most extraordinary affection, mounting within me to an indescribable sweetness. If this is perfected in me, it will be something – I know not what – that will not belong to this life."
