August
28
Saints of the Day
Saint Augustine of Hippo,
354-430
Doctor of the Church,
Doctor of Grace, converted after many tears of his mother, the greatest
theologian of Christendom
The sinner turned
saint. A Christian at 33, a priest at 36, a bishop at 41. Many people are
familiar with the biographical sketch of Augustine of Hippo, but really to get
to know the man is a rewarding experience.
Before Conversion:
His
father
was a pagan who
converted
on his death bed; his mother was
Saint Monica,
a devout Christian. Trained in Christianity, he lost his faith in youth and led
a wild life. Lived with a Carthaginian woman from the age of 15 through 30.
Fathered a son whom he named Adeotadus, which means the gift of God.
Taught
rhetoric at
Carthage
and
Milan.
After investigating and experimenting with several philosophies, he became a
Manichaean for several years; it taught of a great struggle between good and
evil, and featured a lax moral code. A summation of his thinking at the time
comes from his
Confessions: "God, give me chastity and continence - but not just
now."
Conversion: Augustine finally broke with the
Manichaeans and was
converted
by the prayers and tears of his mother,
the instructions of Saint Ambrose of Milan
who baptized him...but most of all, by the grace God himself speaking to him in
the Scriptures redirected Augustine’s love of life to a life of love.
Activity:
- On the death of his
mother
he returned to
Africa,
sold his property, gave the proceeds to the
poor,
and founded a
monastery.
Monk.
Priest.
Preacher.
Bishop
of Hippo in
396.
- Founded religious communities, the Augustinians with
several branches. A famous Augustinian priest, Martin Luther, distorted his
teachings on the Grace and founded Protestantism.
- A great writer, probably the greatest theologian of
Christianity, mostly on the grace, his famous Confessions, and fighting
heresies. The book I like the most is On the Trinity, though the City
of God is great, God created His City, but the devil created his own city
too, yes the two cities on earth! See
Some Writings in the Internet:
-
Doctor of the Church.
- Fought
Manichaeism,
Donatism,
Pelagianism
and other heresies.
- Oversaw his church and his see during the fall of the Roman
Empire to the Vandals.
His summed up thinking in a line from his writings:
Our hearts were made for You, O Lord, and they are restless
until they rest in you.
-
Manichaeism,It purported to be the true synthesis of
all the religious systems then known, and actually consisted of Zoroastrian
Dualism, Babylonian folklore, Buddhist ethics, and some small and superficial,
additions of Christian elements... many cults and oriental systems
today are Manichaeism.
-
Donatism, a schism due to disobedience and criticism of the church
authority, they do it all wrong!... there are some Donatists today!
-
Pelagianism, denied original sin as well as Christian
grace, regarded the moral strength of man's will as sufficient in itself to
desire and to attain the loftiest ideal of virtue... yes, like atheism and
modernism...
- Born
13 November
354
at Tagaste, Numidia, North Africa (Souk-Ahras, Algeria) as Aurelius Augustinus
Died
28 August
430
at Hippo
Images
Gallery of images of Saint Augustine [6 images, 123
kb, 3 links]
Writings of St. Augustine in the Internet:
Confessions,
The
Confessions, The Confessions,
The Confessions,
The Rule of Saint
Augustine
The City of God,
The City of God,
The City of
God
On the Holy Trinity,
On the Holy Trinity, Doctrinal and Moral
Treatises,
On Christian
Doctrine,
On the Sermon on the Mount,
On the Harmony of the Gospels,
Selected
Sermons, The
Enchiridion: Handbook, on Faith, Hope, and Love,
The Writings Against the Manichaeans and Against
the Donatists,
Anti-Pelagian
Writings
Letters 1-44,
Soliloquies,
http://www.augustinian.villanova.edu/writings/english.htm
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/1534/august/augwrite.htm
http://www.ccel.org/, Christian Classics
Additional Information
http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/sainta02.htm
http://www.americancatholic.org/Features/SaintOfDay/default.asp?id=1121
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Readings
God has no need of your money, but the poor have. You give it to the poor,
and God receives it.
Saint Augustine
The honors of this world, what are they but puff, and emptiness and peril of
falling?
Saint Augustine
Daily advance, then, in this love, both by praying and by well doing, that
through the help of Him who enjoined it on you, and whose gift it is, it may
be nourished and increased, until, being perfected, it render you perfect.
Saint Augustine
What do you possess if you possess not God?
Saint Augustine
Unhappy is the soul enslaved by the love of anything that is mortal.
Saint Augustine
The love of worldly possessions is a sort of bird line, which entangles the
soul, and prevents it flying to God.
Saint Augustine
This very moment I may, if I desire, become the friend of God.
Saint Augustine
God bestows more consideration on the purity of the intention with which our
actions are performed than on the actions themselves.
Saint Augustine
I will suggest a means whereby you can praise God all day long, if you wish.
Whatever you do, do it well, and you have praised God.
Saint Augustine
This is the business of our life. By labor and prayer to advance in the grace
of God, till we come to that height of perfection in which, with clean hearts,
we may behold God.
Saint Augustine
God in his omnipotence could not give more, in His wisdom He knew not how to
give more, in His riches He had not more to give, than the Eucharist.
Saint Augustine
God does not command impossibilities, but by commanding admonishes you do what
you can and to pray for what you cannot, and aids you that you may be able.
Saint Augustine
Our life and our death are with our neighbor.
Saint Augustine
Conquer yourself and the world lies at your feet.
Saint Augustine
O eternal truth, true love and beloved eternity. You are my God. To you do I
sigh day and night. When I first came to know you, you drew me to yourself so
that I might see that there were things for me to see, but that I myself was
not yet ready to see them. Meanwhile you overcame the weakness of my vision,
sending forth most strongly the beams of your light, and I trembled at once
with love and dread.
I sought a way to gain the strength which I needed to enjoy you. But I did not
find it until I embraced "the mediator between God and men, the man Christ
Jesus, who is above all, God blessed for ever." He was calling me and saying:
"I am the way of truth, I am the life."
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 have not been at all. You called, you
shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you
dispelled my blindness. You breathed you 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.
from the
Confessions of Saint Augustine
Neither are the souls of the pious dead separated from the Church which even
now is the kingdom of Christ. Otherwise there would be no remembrance of them
at the altar of God in the communication of the Body of Christ.
from The City of God by Saint Augustine
A Christian people celebrates together in religious solemnity the memorials of
the martyrs, both to encourage their being imitated and so that it can share
in their merits and be aided by their prayers."
from Against Faustus the Manichean, by Saint Augustine
There is an ecclesiastical discipline, as the faithful know, when the names of
the martyrs are read aloud in that place at the altar of God, where prayer is
not offered for them. Prayer, however, is offered for the dead who are
remembered. For it is wrong to pray for a martyr, to whose prayers we ought
ourselves be commended.
from Sermons by Saint Augustine
At the Lord's table we do not commemorate martyrs in the same way that we do
others who rest in peace so as to pray for them, but rather that they may pray
for us that we may follow in their footsteps.
from Homilies on John by Saint Augustine
Since we cannot, as yet, understand that He was begotten by the Father before
the day-star, let us celebrate His birth of the Virgin in the nocturnal hours.
Since we do not comprehend how His name existed before the light of the sun,
let us recognize His tabernacle placed in the sun. Since we do not, as yet,
gaze upon the Son inseparably united with His Father, let us remember Him as
the 'bridegroom coming out of his bride chamber.' Since we are not yet ready
for the banquet of our Father, let us grow familiar with the manger of our
Lord Jesus Christ.
Saint Augustine
He prays for us as our priest, prays in us as our Head, and is prayed to by us
as our God. Therefore let us acknowledge our voice in him and his in us.
Saint Augustine
Question the beauty of the earth, the sea, the air distending and diffusing
itself, the sky, question all these realities. All respond: 'See, we are
beautiful.' These beauties are subject to change. Who made them if not the
Beautiful One who is not subject to change?
Saint Augustine
One and the same Word of God extends throughout the Scripture, that it is one
and the same Utterance that resounds in the mouths of all the sacred writers,
since He who was in the beginning God with God has no need for separate
syllables; for he is not subject to time.
Saint Augustine
Jesus Christ will be Lord of all, or he will not be Lord at all.
Saint Augustine
If physical things please you, then praise God for them, but turn back your
love to Him who created them, lest in the things that please you, you
displease Him. If souls please you, love them in God; for in themselves they
are changeable, but in Him they are firmly established. Without Him they pass
away and perish. In Him, then, let them be loved, and carry along with you to
Him as many souls as you can, and say to them, "Let us love Him, let us love
Him; He made the world and is not far from it. He did not make all things and
then leave them, but they are of Him and in Him. See, there He is wherever
truth is loved. He is within the very heart, yet the heart has strayed from
Him. Return to your heart, O you transgressors, and hold fast to Him who made
you. Stand with Him and you will stand fast. Rest in Him and you shall be at
rest."
Saint Augustine, from
The Confessions
Let us understand that God is a physician, and that suffering is a medicine
for salvation, not a punishment for damnation.
Saint Augustine
O Sacrament of Love! O sign of Unity! O bond of Charity! He who would have
Life finds here indeed a Life to live in and a Life to live by.
Saint Augustine
If you see that you have not yet suffered tribulations, consider it certain
that you have not begun to be a true servant of God; for Saint Paul says
plainly that all who chose to live piously in Christ, shall suffer
persecutions
Saint Augustine
I speak to you who have just been reborn in
baptism, my little
children
in Christ, you who are the new offspring of the Church, gift of the Father,
proof of Mother Church's fruitfulness. All of you who stand fast in the Lord
are a holy seed, a new colony of
bees,
the very flower of our ministry and fruit of our toil, my joy and my crown. It
is the words of the Apostle that I address to you: Put on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and make no provision for the flesh and its desires, so that you may
be clothed with the life of him whom you have put on in this sacrament. You
have all been clothed with Christ by your
baptism
in him. There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor freeman;
there is neither male nor female; you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Such is the power of this sacrament: it is a sacrament of new life which
begins here and now with the forgiveness of all past sins, and will be brought
to completion in the resurrection of the dead. You have been buried with
Christ by
baptism
into death in order that, as Christ has risen from the dead, you also may walk
in newness of life.
You are walking now by faith, still on pilgrimage in a mortal body away from
the Lord; but he to whom your steps are directed is himself the sure and
certain way for you: Jesus Christ, who for our sake became man. For all who
fear him he has stored up abundant happiness, which he will reveal to those
who hope in him, bringing it to completion when we have attained the reality
which even now we possess in hope.
This is the octave day of your new birth. Today is fulfilled in you the sign
of faith that was prefigured in the Old Testament by the circumcision of the
flesh on the eighth day after birth. When the Lord rose from the dead, he put
off the mortality of the flesh; his risen body was still the same body, but it
was no longer subject to death. By his resurrection he consecrated Sunday, or
the Lord's day. Though the third after his passion, this day is the eighth
after the Sabbath, and thus also the first day of the week.
And so your own hope of resurrection, though not yet realized, is sure and
certain, because you have received the sacrament or sign of this reality, and
have been given the pledge of the Spirit. If, then, you have risen with
Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right
hand of God. Set your hearts on heavenly things, not the things that are on
earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When
Christ, your life, appears, then you too will appear with him in glory.
from a sermon by Saint Augustine
Saints of August 28:
http://www.saintpatrickdc.org/ss/0328.htm
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