St. Augustine

The life of St. Augustine

Augustine was born on 13th November 354, in Tagaste, a small town situated about fifty miles inland from the port of Hippo. Hippo is on the northern coast of Africa, today Algeria. His parents, Monica and Patricius, owned a house and few acres of land, but were not considered wealthy. Monica was a Christian of intense but simple piety, while Patricius a pagan, until shortly before his death in 370. After elementary schooling in Tagaste, Augustine was sent, at about the age of ten, to study grammar and classical literature in Madaura, a nearby town. About 369, the young Augustine due to lack of funds, had to interrupt his studies for a year.

Romanianus, a wealthy Tagastan, provided the money for Augustine to go to Carthage for advanced studies in rhetoric. This was in the fall of 370. A brilliant student, Augustine soon became a teacher in his own right, opening a grammar school in Tagaste (373 – 374) and then teaching rhetoric at Carthage until 383.

For many years, Augustine lived with a woman (whose name we do not know) who bore him a son, in 371, named Adeodatus. The following year Augustine, drawn perhaps by companionship in search for truth, became a member of the Manichaean sect and remained a member for some nine years. The Manichaeans believed in two great gods: one was the source of light and goodness, the other was the ruler of darkness and evil. Augustine became increasingly disillusioned with the Manichaean experts as they proved incapable of dealing with questions he put to them.

At the age of about twenty-eight, he left Carthage and went to Rome. There he made connections that procured for him the appointment to an official professorship at Milan, then the place of residence of the emperor of the west.

The bishop of Milan was Ambrose, the most eminent Christian leader of the day. Augustine went to hear him preach, and this, his first contact with the mind of a Christian intellectual, was enough to shake his prejudice against Catholic teaching. The climax of a long personal struggle came in the summer of 386 in a Milan garden; Augustine speaks of this in his book the Confessions.

So that I might pour out all these tears and speak the words that came with them I rose up from Alpius (solitude seemed better for the business of weeping) and went further away so that I might not be embarrassed even by his presence. This was how I felt and he realised it. No doubt I had said something or other, and he could feel the weight of my tears in the sound of my voice. And so I rose to my feet, and he, in a state of utter amazement, remained in the place where we had been sitting. I flung myself down on the ground somehow under a fig tree and gave free rein to my tears; they streamed and flooded from my eyes, an acceptable sacrifice to you. And I kept saying to you, to perhaps in these words, but with this sense: “And you, O Lord, how long? How long, Lord; will you be angry forever? Remember not our former iniquities.” For I felt that it was these which were holding me fast. And in my misery I would exclaim: “How long, how long this “tomorrow and tomorrow”? Why not now? Why not finish this very hour with my uncleanness?”

So I spoke, weeping in the bitter contrition of my heart. Suddenly a voice reaches my ears from a nearby house. It is the voice of a boy or a girl (I do not know which) and in a kind of singsong the words are constantly repeated: “Take and read. Take and read.” At once my face changed, and I began to think carefully of whether the singing of words like these came into any kind of game which children play, and I could not remember that I had ever heard anything like it before. I checked the force of my tears and rose to my feet, being quite certain that I must interpret this as a divine command to me to open the book and read the first passage which I should come upon. For I had heard this about Anthony: he had happened to come in when the gospel was being read, and as though the words read were spoken directly to himself, had received the admonition: “Go, sell at that you have, and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven and come and follow me.” And by such an oracle he had been immediately converted to you.

So I went eagerly back to the place where Alypius was sitting, since it was there that I had left the book of the Apostle when I rose to my feet. I snatched up the book, opened it, and read in silence the passage upon which my eyes first fell: “Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying: but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh in concupiscence.” I had no wish to read further; there was no need to. For immediately I had reached the end of this sentence it was as though my heart was filled with a light of confidence and all the shadows of my doubt were swept away.

The fall of the year 386 found Augustine ready to resign his teaching position and to begin his preparation for baptism in the Catholic Church. Bishop Ambrose baptised him during the Easter vigil in 387. On their way back to Africa, Augustine and his Monica were delayed in Ostia. The touching account of the death of his mother, in the late spring of 387 is in the ninth book of the Confessions.

Home again at Tagaste, Augustine formed a small community devoted to the religious life of contemplation and study. But, its peace was soon broken when, on a visit to Hippo in 381, Augustine was forced to accept ordination as assistant priest to its aging bishop. Four years later he became auxiliary bishop of Hippo, succeeding to the see in 396. The bishop in Roman Africa was not only the pastor of the parish, the busy teacher and preacher, but the presiding judge in a much-frequented court of summary jurisdiction in civil cases. Augustine never enjoyed robust health, and the vast extent of his literary output was made possible only by the constant services of stenographers and by his extraordinary capacity to formulate ordered thought.

Most of Augustine’s important treatises appeared in the first quarter of the fifth century. The book of Confessions was written in the years about 400. Between 400 and 416 he wrote, in fifteen books, On the Trinity, long recognised as the major Patristic treatise on this subject. In almost the same period (401 – 416) his most important biblical work was composed, the Literal Commentary on Genesis. Responding to a growing attack on Christianity within the Roman Empire, Augustine began his famous City of God in 413 and did not complete its twenty-two books before 426. His numerous letters and sermons were carefully preserved. Four years before his death Augustine undertook to review his many writings, in chronological order. These Retractions (426) give a solid base for determining the dates and authenticity of the more than 1000 works that came from his pen.

Augustine’s demanding responsibilities never induced him to abandon his monastic ideals. Until his last hour he remained inflexibly a monk. As a priest he founded a monastery on a portion of church grounds, given him for this purpose by Bishop Valerius. As a bishop he turned his Episcopal residence into a monastery in which the members of his household lived the common life. The monastic ideal of Saint Augustine came to full fruition centuries later when numerous religious communities sprang up which adopted the Rule of Saint Augustine and became a powerful force in evangelisation, preaching the gospel to the poor in the cities, bringing the good news to the world, defining the true faith in the pulpits and on university chairs, taking the initiative in founding schools, orphanages, hospitals and other works of charity.

To the world at large Saint Augustine is above all known as the great thinker who powerfully influenced philosophy and theology, the thrust of the spirituality of the Latin Church and the development of apostolic endeavours. The source from whence he drew the strength for his great achievements should not be overlooked: his monastic ideal, and contemplation and the search for God.

Augustine died on 28th August 430, the day his feast is celebrated in the Roman Calendar. The feast of Conversion of St. Augustine is celebrated on 24th April.