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Preface

Saint Augustine of Hippo

By Michael R. Heinlein

The complex and multifaceted life of Saint Augustine has an enduring witness and universal appeal for those who seek to follow Christ. The Confessions is his autobiography, covering the early years of his life through middle age. We learn a great deal about his struggles in the battle for grace and virtue, as well as the difficulties associated with searching for the truth in the midst of secular, sinful influences.

Augustine’s whole life can be understood as a quest for love and truth. Born in Thagaste in northern Africa, in 354, Augustine pursued a classical education. Studying rhetoric in Carthage, he fell head over heels in love with wisdom in the study of philosophy, particularly of the Greeks. He desired to share what he learned and became a teacher of rhetoric and philosophy, establishing schools and holding various professorships in Carthage, Rome, and Milan. But while his professional success increased, his interior life became more and more dissatisfying.

Exposed to Christianity as a child through his mother and her deep faith, Augustine was not baptized or committed to the Christian faith until he was much older. Before becoming a Christian, he even spent time involved with the heretical Manichaeans. His experience with the sect left him thirsting for more.

Like so many of us, Augustine walked a long and winding road that led him finally to embrace the Faith. This meant reconciling his previous life — in which he even fathered a child out of wedlock and named him after the pagan god Baal — with a new life in Christ.

Augustine models for us what conversion looks like: it is a gradual turning toward and moving ever closer to Christ, but it is never turning back. For Augustine, conversion to Christianity even meant resigning his professorship in rhetoric. He wanted to live a good life, but because he knew it was only possible with God’s help, he gave God his all and left behind his worldly life in search of an eternal one. He was baptized in Milan, along with his son, by Saint Ambrose, at the Easter Vigil in 387.

One of the most important moments on his path to conversion was when he heard a mysterious child’s voice summon him to “take and read” the Bible. Opening the Scriptures at random, fulfilling what he took to be a divine command, he came upon Saint Paul’s exhortation to the Romans about how the whole Gospel is aimed at making believers and shaping their behavior. In one of the most poignant and quoted passages of his autobiography, Augustine describes the beauty of finding the God who was with him throughout his meandering search, recognizing the peace God alone can give in response to our every longing.

One of the most important aspects of his conversion was the continual and persistent support of his mother, Saint Monica. Her greatest desire was to pass on the Faith to those she loved, and this became particularly obvious when Augustine was ill as a boy, and her husband forbade his baptism. Monica was able to see her husband enter the Church at the time of his death. She followed Augustine in his many travels before his conversion and constantly prayed for him. Of course, she knew that her son was ambling aimlessly in search of Christ, though he himself did not know it. But she offered him a mother’s patient love. Her spiritual strength and persistence became the foundation for Augustine’s faith when at last he converted. Some of the most moving portions of his Confessions speak of his relationship with his holy mother, especially his remembrance and prayer for her at the time of her death.

By his mid-thirties, Augustine had lost his mother and son to death, and he found himself back in his native north Africa. After selling all he had and giving the profits to the poor, he used his one remaining possession — the family home — as the location for a new religious community of like-minded men, even writing a rule that endures today as a basis for many religious congregations. Augustine was eventually ordained a priest and became famous as a preacher. Many of his sermons survive as some of the most treasured of his writings.

Augustine later became bishop at Hippo, near his home in northern Africa. In his exercise of that office, he came to be a model for all who share in that ministry. Bishops are to exercise the ministry of unity, and Augustine offers a model through the lens of teaching, which is one of the threefold tasks of any bishop. His was an integrated life, and he internalized the unity he sought to build because he believed what he read, taught what he believed, and practiced what he taught. This is all on display in the Confessions, which serves as part theological treatise, part philosophical lecture, and part prayer, all the while remaining within the context of a serious reflection on his own life.

The Confessions is not just a dry, linear enumeration of dates and events. Rather, the work is a spiritual autobiography, in which Augustine bares his soul to the reader, sharing the wisdom he learned along the road to his conversion. Augustine’s story gives hope to those who may have, as the song goes, “been looking for love in all the wrong places,” as he did for so many years. Augustine’s life illustrates that we will not be content with anything that keeps us from the God of love, peace, and truth. And he helps us recognize how God is constantly at work in our lives as a provident and loving Father.

Within Augustine, and in his writings, we encounter a reasonable and intelligent faith, one of depth and substance, springing from his interior relationship with God. In Augustine, faith and reason are in continual dialogue, mutually enriching and building off each other. The entirety of Augustine’s life and teaching evidences the importance of this dialogue.

This is found in all of his writings, from his commentaries on Scripture or the political scene of his day, to his catechism and his critiques of heresies of his time. His writings cover the gambit of theological topics, everything from astrology to sexuality. His arguments on topics like the Trinity, the just war theory, and the validity of the sacraments have stood the test of time and remain among the most cited of his works by theologians and philosophers in the West. His teachings on sin and grace were even held in high esteem by many of the Protestant reformers.

Toward the end of his life, the Roman Empire was disintegrating, and northern Africa was also attacked in his last months. It was reported that Augustine was responsible for a miraculous healing during the siege. The saint died in Hippo, in modern-day Algeria, in 430. After his death, the city was destroyed by fire, except for his residence, which housed his voluminous written works.

The process of canonization was not yet codified in the early Church when Augustine died, but his sanctity was ratified by acclaim of the people. In 1298, he was recognized as a Doctor of the Church by Pope Boniface VIII. He was one of the original four to be so distinguished, along with Saint Ambrose, Saint Jerome, and Saint Gregory the Great.