Saint of the Week – St Augustine of Hippo




Name: Aurelio Augustinus, Bishop of Hippo
Born: 13^th November AD 354; Thagaste (Algeria)  
Died: 28^th August AD 430; Hippo Regius (Algeria)
Feast Day: 28^th August
Patron Saint of: Theologians/Philosophers/


Many years ago I remember a seminary professor making the hypothetical case that if he had to choose between saving the entire writings of St Augustine or alternatively, the entire written corpus of all the other Church Fathers combined (excluding St Augustine), then he would not even hesitate in choosing St Augustine’s writings and leaving all else to perish. Personally, I have heart palpitations at the thought of even having to make such a choice, but his point was clear. St Augustine’s contribution to the theological development of the Post-Apostolic Church was (we can say without any hyperbole) unrivalled, and his influence on theology has remained undimmed over the course of two thousand years, influencing theologians of every generation. Augustine is the most frequently sourced authority in the current Catechism of the Catholic Church (89 citations) – by comparison St Thomas Aquinas comes in second place with 62 citations. Significantly, the Augustinian influence upon the theology of Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) was particularly pronounced.

Unlike most of the saints of the first thousand years Augustine’s biographical record is quite detailed, in no small part because of his autobiographical spiritual masterpiece “The Confessions.” Born in Thagaste (a northern African city that was part of the collapsing Roman Empire) of a pagan father and Christian mother (St Monica), Augustine received a good classical education in his youth but demonstrated no pious inclinations. Augustine tells with candour and piercing insight his own deeply personal spiritual, moral and intellectual journey from pagan hedonist to Christian convert. The opening paragraph contains among his most famous quotations: “Lord, you made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” The whole remainder of the Confessions describes Augustine’s passionate, anguished, aching search for God, which leads him to explore an array of worldly substitutes for God which he recounts with great honesty– the pleasures of the flesh, professional accomplishments, the gnostic religious cult of Manichaeism, intellectual glory and the consolation of literature and philosophy. He comes to understand that in all these things it was really God, the summum bonum (greatest good) he was seeking:  

‘Late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you!
…You were with me, but I was not with you.
The beautiful things of this world held me back far from you,
those things which would have no being, were they not in you.
You called, shouted, broke through my deafness;
you flared, blazed, banished my blindness;
you lavished your fragrance, I gasped; and now I pant for you;
I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst;
you touched me, and I burned for your peace!’ (Confessions, X, 27)

Written 1600 years before the advent of modern psychology, Augustine demonstrates an astonishing capacity for introspection and self-analysis. His unflinching observation of fallen human nature provides the underlying anthropology for his entire theology of grace. Augustine is sometimes accused of having a pessimistic view of human nature as fundamentally weak and sinful, yet he is merely expounding the Pauline view of grace: “where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20). Indeed, Augustine fought strenuously against the ascendant heresy of Pelagianism – the erroneous belief that one can attain to salvation by one’s own efforts – pulling oneself up to heaven by one’s own bootstraps, so to speak. Augustine played a major role in developing the doctrine of Original Sin as the explanation for concupiscence - man’s fallen nature and tendency to sin. It was abundantly clear to him that human nature left to itself was wildly unreliable and that the capacity to attain to holiness was something given to us by God: it was a work of grace granted through the merits of Christ’s Passion. Without Christ, and the grace of the Church’s sacraments none could be saved, hence his insistence on the necessity of Baptism. With good reason St Augustine is called the Doctor of Grace. The other great Latin doctor of the Church, St Ambrose (bishop of Milan) played a pivotal role in Augustine’s conversion to Christianity. Following his baptism Augustine assumed an ascetical, semi-monastic life of prayer and self-discipline and having sorted out his worldly affairs he eventually pursued the priesthood. Augustine was made the bishop of Hippo (North Africa) in 395AD where he worked strenuously to defend the faith and serve the pastoral needs of his flock.

Among Augustine’s other major works are the “City of God,” “On Christine Doctrine” and his tract “On the Trinity.” The breadth of his themes, the originality and profundity of his thought and the sheer voluminousness of his writings have made Augustine a touchstone of Christine orthodoxy throughout the past two millennia. To me it is sad that so few Catholics have taken the time to read any of the works of St Augustine since he offers a solid theological foundation for the Catholic faith, that accords with reason and lived experience. Every serious-minded Catholic should read Augustine’s Confessions at least once before they die. Perhaps the reason so many (especially lapsed) Catholics struggle with matters of faith is because they lack an adequately sophisticated philosophy, theology and anthropology to make sense of Christian doctrine; instead they make all their decisions on the basis of fleeting feelings and passions, as though these were the most reliable basis for understanding the truth. Given the modern age’s obsession with sexual pleasure as the summum bonum (highest good) we could learn from the wisdom of Augustine who understood from bitter personal experience that the pursuit of worldly pleasure as an end in itself is ultimately a self-destructive idol. Conversely, the pursuit of God is not a lifestyle choice for the religiously inclined – it is the fundamental vocation of the human person: ‘Lord, you made us for yourself.’ The profound spirit of restlessness that we see in our pleasure-addicted culture is a symptom of the inevitable frustration caused by making a ‘god’ out of things other than God, thereby depriving us of the one thing we need for fulfilment, Jesus Christ. Yes Lord, you made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. These are among the truest words ever put to paper, and they continue to prompt us to find in the person of Jesus Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Life of every soul.

St Augustine of Hippo, pray for us!