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LIFE OF ST.

AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO Catholic Encyclopedia


To read an article on the Teaching of St. Augustine

The great St. Augustine's life is unfolded to us in documents of unrivaled richness, and of no great character of ancient times have we information comparable to that contained in the "Confessions," which relate the touching story of his soul, the "Retractations," which give the history of his mind, and the "Life of Augustine," written by his friend Possidius, telling of the saint's apostolate. We will confine ourselves to sketching the three periods of this great life: (1) the young wanderer's gradual return to the Faith; (2) the doctrinal development of the Christian philosopher to the time of his episcopate; and (3) the full development of his activities upon the Episcopal throne of Hippo.

I. FROM HIS BIRTH TO HIS CONVERSION (354386) Augustine was born at Tagaste on 13 November, 354. Tagaste, now Souk-Ahras, about 60 miles from Bona (ancient Hippo-Regius), was at that time a small free city of proconsular Numidia which had recently been converted from Donatism. Although eminently respectable, his family was not rich, and his father, Patricius, one of the curiales of the city, was still a
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pagan. However, the admirable virtues that made Monica the ideal of Christian mothers at length brought her husband the grace of baptism and of a holy death, about the year 371. Augustine received a Christian education. His mother had him signed with the cross and enrolled among the catechumens. Once, when very ill, he asked for baptism, but, all danger being soon passed, he deferred receiving the sacrament, thus yielding to a deplorable custom of the times. His association with "men of prayer" left three great ideas deeply engraven upon his soul: a Divine Providence, the future life with terrible sanctions, and, above all, Christ the Saviour. "From my tenderest infancy, I had in a manner sucked with my mother's milk that name of my Saviour, Thy Son; I kept it in the recesses of my heart; and all that presented itself to me without that Divine Name, though it might be elegant, well written, and even replete with truth, did not altogether carry me away" (Confessions, I, iv). But a great intellectual and moral crisis stifled for a time all these Christian sentiments. The heart was the first point of attack. Patricius, proud of his son's success in the schools of Tagaste and Madaura determined to send him to Carthage to prepare for a forensic career. But, unfortunately, it required several months to collect the necessary means, and Augustine had to spend his sixteenth year at Tagaste in an idleness which was fatal to his virtue; he gave himself up to pleasure with all the vehemence of an ardent nature. At first he prayed, but without the sincere desire of being heard, and when he
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reached Carthage, towards the end of the year 370, every circumstance tended to draw him from his true course: the many seductions of the great city that was sill half pagan, the licentiousness of other students, the theatres, the intoxication of his literary success, and a proud desire always to be first, even in evil. Before long he was obliged to confess to Monica that he had formed a sinful liaison with the person who bore him a son (372), "the son of his sin" -- an entanglement from which he only delivered himself at Milan after fifteen years of its thralldom. Two extremes are to be avoided in the appreciation of this crisis. Some, like Mommsen, misled perhaps by the tone of grief in the "Confessions," have exaggerated it: in the "Realencyklopdie" (3d ed., II, 268) Loofs reproves Mommsen on this score, and yet he himself is to lenient towards Augustine, when he claims that in those days, the Church permitted concubinage. The "Confessions" alone prove that Loofs did not understand the 17th canon of Toledo. However, it may be said that, even in his fall, Augustine maintained a certain dignity and felt a compunction which does him honour, and that, from the age of nineteen, he had a genuine desire to break the chain. In fact, in 373, an entirely new inclination manifested itself in his life, brought about by the reading Cicero's "Hortensius" whence he imbibed a love of the wisdom which Cicero so eloquently praises. Thenceforward Augustine looked upon rhetoric merely as a profession; his heart was in philosophy. Unfortunately, his faith, as well as his morals, was to
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pass though a terrible crisis. In this same year, 373, Augustine and his friend Honoratus fell into the snares of the Manichans. It seems strange that so great a mind should have been victimized by Oriental vapourings, synthesized by the Persian Mani (215-276) into coarse, material dualism, and introduced into Africa scarcely fifty years previously. Augustine himself tells us that he was enticed by the promises of a free philosophy unbridled by faith; by the boasts of the Manichans, who claimed to have discovered contradictions in Holy Writ; and, above all, by the hope of finding in their doctrine a scientific explanation of nature and its most mysterious phenomena. Augustine's inquiring mind was enthusiastic for the natural sciences, and the Manichans declared that nature withheld no secrets from Faustus, their doctor. Moreover, being tortured by the problem of the origin of evil, Augustine, in default of solving it, acknowledged a conflict of two principles. And then, again, there was a very powerful charm in the moral irresponsibility resulting from a doctrine which denied liberty and attributed the commission of crime to a foreign principle. Once won over to this sect, Augustine devoted himself to it with all the ardour of his character; he read all its books, adopted and defended all its opinions. His furious proselytism drew into error his friend Alypius and Romanianus, his Mcenas of Tagaste, the friend of his father who was defraying the expenses of Augustine's studies. It was during this Manichan period that Augustine's literary faculties reached their
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full development, and he was still a student at Carthage when he embraced error. His studies ended, he should in due course have entered the forum litigiosum, but he preferred the career of letters, and Possidius tells us that he returned to Tagaste to "teach grammar." The young professor captivated his pupils, one of whom, Alypius, hardly younger than his master, loath to leave, him after following him into error, was afterwards baptized with him at Milan, eventually becoming Bishop of Tagaste, his native city. But Monica deeply deplored Augustine's heresy and would not have received him into her home or at her table but for the advice of a saintly bishop, who declared that "the son of so many tears could not perish." Soon afterwards Augustine went to Carthage, where he continued to teach rhetoric. His talents shone to even better advantage on this wider stage, and by an indefatigable pursuit of the liberal arts his intellect attained its full maturity. Having taken part in a poetic tournament, he carried off the prize, and the Proconsul Vindicianus publicly conferred upon him the corona agonistica. It was at this moment of literary intoxication, when he had just completed his first work on sthetics, now lost that he began to repudiate Manichism. Even when Augustine was in his first fervour, the teachings of Mani had been far from quieting his restlessness, and although he has been accused of becoming a priest of the sect, he was never initiated or numbered among the "elect," but remained an "auditor" the lowest degree in the hierarchy. He himself gives the reason for his disenchantment. First of all there was the fearful depravity of Manichan philosophy -- "They destroy
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everything and build up nothing"; then, the dreadful immorality in contrast with their affectation of virtue; the feebleness of their arguments in controversy with the Catholics, to whose Scriptural arguments their only reply was: "The Scriptures have been falsified." But, worse than all, he did not find science among them -science in the modern sense of the word -- that knowledge of nature and its laws which they had promised him. When he questioned them concerning the movements of the stars, none of them could answer him. "Wait for Faustus," they said, "he will explain everything to you." Faustus of Mileve, the celebrated Manichan bishop, at last came to Carthage; Augustine visited and questioned him, and discovered in his responses the vulgar rhetorician, the utter stranger to all scientific culture. The spell was broken, and, although Augustine did not immediately abandon the sect, his mind rejected Manichan doctrines. The illusion had lasted nine years. But the religious crisis of this great soul was only to be resolved in Italy, under the influence of Ambrose. In 383 Augustine, at the age of twenty-nine, yielded to the irresistible attraction which Italy had for him, but his mother suspected his departure and was so reluctant to be separated from him that he resorted to a subterfuge and embarked under cover of the night. He had only just arrived in Rome when he was taken seriously ill; upon recovering he opened a school of rhetoric, but, disgusted by the tricks of his pupils, who shamelessly defrauded him of their tuition fees, he applied for a vacant
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professorship at Milan, obtained it, and was accepted by the prefect, Symmachus. Having visited Bishop Ambrose, the fascination of that saint's kindness induced him to become a regular attendant at his preachings. However, before embracing the Faith, Augustine underwent a three years' struggle during which his mind passed through several distinct phases. At first he turned towards the philosophy of the Academics, with its pessimistic scepticism; then neo-Platonic philosophy inspired him with genuine enthusiasm. At Milan he had scarcely read certain works of Plato and, more especially, of Plotinus, before the hope of finding the truth dawned upon him. Once more he began to dream that he and his friends might lead a life dedicated to the search for it, a life purged of all vulgar aspirations after honours, wealth, or pleasure, and with celibacy for its rule (Confessions, VI). But it was only a dream; his passions still enslaved him. Monica, who had joined her son at Milan, prevailed upon him to become betrothed, but his affianced bride was too young, and although Augustine dismissed the mother of Adeodatus, her place was soon filled by another. Thus did he pass through one last period of struggle and anguish. Finally, through the reading of the Holy Scriptures light penetrated his mind. Soon he possessed the certainty that Jesus Christ is the only way to truth and salvation. After that resistance came only from the heart. An interview with Simplicianus, the future successor of St. Ambrose, who told Augustine the story of the conversion of the celebrated neo-Platonic rhetorician, Victorinus (Confessions, VIII, i, ii), prepared the way for the grand
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stroke of grace which, at the age of thirty-three, smote him to the ground in the garden at Milan (September, 386). A few days later Augustine, being ill, took advantage of the autumn holidays and, resigning his professorship, went with Monica, Adeodatus, and his friends to Cassisiacum, the country estate of Verecundus, there to devote himself to the pursuit of true philosophy which, for him, was now inseparable from Christianity.

II. FROM HIS CONVERSION TO HIS EPISCOPATE (386-395) Augustine gradually became acquainted with Christian doctrine, and in his mind the fusion of Platonic philosophy with revealed dogmas was taking place. The law that governed this change of thought has of late years been frequently misconstrued; it is sufficiently important to be precisely defined. The solitude of Cassisiacum realized a long-cherished dream. In his books "Against the Academics," Augustine has described the ideal serenity of this existence, enlivened only by the passion for truth. He completed the education of his young friends, now by literary readings in common, now by philosophical conferences to which he sometimes invited Monica, and the accounts of which, compiled by a secretary, have supplied the foundation of the "Dialogues." Licentius, in his "Letters," would later on recall these delightful philosophical mornings and evenings, at which
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Augustine was wont to evolve the most elevating discussions from the most commonplace incidents. The favourite topics at their conferences were truth, certainty (Against the Academics), true happiness in philosophy (On a Happy Life), the Providential order of the world and the problem of evil (On Order) and finally God and the soul (Soliloquies, On the Immortality of the Soul). Here arises the curious question propounded modern critics: Was Augustine a Christian when wrote these "Dialogues" at Cassisiacum? Until now no one had doubted it; historians, relying upon the "Confessions," had all believed that Augustine's retirement to the villa had for its twofold object the improvement of his health and his preparation for baptism. But certain critics nowadays claim to have discovered a radical opposition between the philosophical "Dialogues" composed in this retirement and the state of soul described in the "Confessions." According to Harnack, in writing the "Confessions" Augustine must have projected upon the recluse of 386 the sentiments of the bishop of 400. Others go farther and maintain that the recluse of the Milanese villa could not have been at heart a Christian, but a Platonist; and that the scene in the garden was a conversion not to Christianity, but to philosophy, the genuinely Christian phase beginning only in 390. But this interpretation of the "Dialogues" cannot withstand the test of facts and texts. It is admitted that Augustine received baptism at Easter, 387; and who could suppose that it was for him a meaningless ceremony? So too, how can it be admitted that the scene in the garden, the
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example of the recluses, the reading of St. Paul, the conversion of Victorinus, Augustine's ecstasies in reading the Psalms with Monica were all invented after the fact? Again, as it was in 388 that Augustine wrote his beautiful apology "On the Holiness of the Catholic Church," how is it conceivable that he was not yet a Christian at that date? To settle the argument, however, it is only necessary to read the "Dialogues" themselves. They are certainly a purely philosophical work -- a work of youth, too, not without some pretension, as Augustine ingenuously acknowledges (Confessions, IX, iv); nevertheless, they contain the entire history of his Christian formation. As early as 386, the first work written at Cassisiacum reveals to us the great underlying motive of his researches. The object of his philosophy is to give authority the support of reason, and "for him the great authority, that which dominates all others and from which he never wished to deviate, is the authority of Christ"; and if he loves the Platonists it is because he counts on finding among them interpretations always in harmony with his faith (Against the Academics, III, c. x). To be sure such confidence was excessive, but it remains evident that in these "Dialogues" it is a Christian, and not a Platonist, that speaks. He reveals to us the intimate details of his conversion, the argument that convinced him (the life and conquests of the Apostles), his progress in the Faith at the school of St. Paul (ibid., II, ii), his delightful conferences with his friends on the Divinity of Jesus Christ, the wonderful transformations worked in his soul by faith, even to that victory of his over the intellectual pride which his
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Platonic studies had aroused in him (On The Happy Life, I, ii), and at last the gradual calming of his passions and the great resolution to choose wisdom for his only spouse (Soliloquies, I, x). It is now easy to appreciate at its true value the influence of neo-Platonism upon the mind of the great African Doctor. It would be impossible for anyone who has read the works of St. Augustine to deny the existence of this influence. However, it would be a great exaggeration of this influence to pretend that it at any time sacrificed the Gospel to Plato. The same learned critic thus wisely concludes his study: "So long, therefore, as his philosophy agrees with his religious doctrines, St. Augustine is frankly neo- Platonist; as soon as a contradiction arises, he never hesitates to subordinate his philosophy to religion, reason to faith. He was, first of all, a Christian; the philosophical questions that occupied his mind constantly found themselves more and more relegated to the background" (op. cit., 155). But the method was a dangerous one; in thus seeking harmony between the two doctrines he thought too easily to find Christianity in Plato, or Platonism in the Gospel. More than once, in his "Retractations" and elsewhere, he acknowledges that he has not always shunned this danger. Thus he had imagined that in Platonism he discovered the entire doctrine of the Word and the whole prologue of St. John. He likewise disavowed a good number of neo-Platonic theories which had at first misled him -- the cosmological thesis of the universal soul, which makes the world one
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immense animal -- the Platonic doubts upon that grave question: Is there a single soul for all or a distinct soul for each? But on the other hand, he had always reproached the Platonists, as Schaff very properly remarks (Saint Augustine, New York, 1886, p. 51), with being ignorant of, or rejecting, the fundamental points of Christianity: "first, the great mystery, the Word made flesh; and then love, resting on the basis of humility." They also ignore grace, he says, giving sublime precepts of morality without any help towards realizing them. It was this Divine grace that Augustine sought in Christian baptism. Towards the beginning of Lent, 387, he went to Milan and, with Adeodatus and Alypius, took his place among the competentes, being baptized by Ambrose on Easter Day, or at least during Eastertide. The tradition maintaining that the Te Deum was sung on that occasion by the bishop and the neophyte alternately is groundless. (See TE DEUM.) Nevertheless this legend is certainly expressive of the joy of the Church upon receiving as her son him who was to be her most illustrious doctor. It was at this time that Augustine, Alypius, and Evodius resolved to retire into solitude in Africa. Augustine undoubtedly remained at Milan until towards autumn, continuing his works: "On the Immortality of the Soul" and "On Music." In the autumn of 387, he was about to embark at Ostia, when Monica was summoned from this life. In all literature there are no pages of more exquisite sentiment than the story of her saintly death and Augustine's grief (Confessions, IX). Augustine remained several months in Rome,
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chiefly engaged in refuting Manichism. He sailed for Africa after the death of the tyrant Maximus (August 388) and after a short sojourn in Carthage, returned to his native Tagaste. Immediately upon arriving there, he wished to carry out his idea of a perfect life, and began by selling all his goods and giving the proceeds to the poor. Then he and his friends withdrew to his estate, which had already been alienated, there to lead a common life in poverty, prayer, and the study of sacred letters. Book of the "LXXXIII Questions" is the fruit of conferences held in this retirement, in which he also wrote "De Genesi contra Manichos," "De Magistro," and, "De Vera Religione." Augustine did not think of entering the priesthood, and, through fear of the episcopacy, he even fled from cities in which an election was necessary. One day, having been summoned to Hippo by a friend whose soul's salvation was at stake, he was praying in a church when the people suddenly gathered about him, cheered him, and begged Valerius, the bishop, to raise him to the priesthood. In spite of his tears Augustine was obliged to yield to their entreaties, and was ordained in 391. The new priest looked upon his ordination as an additional reason for resuming religious life at Tagaste, and so fully did Valerius approve that he put some church property at Augustine's disposal, thus enabling him to establish a monastery the second that he had founded. His priestly ministry of five years was admirably fruitful; Valerius had bidden him preach, in spite of the deplorable custom which in Africa reserved that
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ministry to bishops. Augustine combated heresy, especially Manichism, and his success was prodigious. Fortunatus, one of their great doctors, whom Augustine had challenged in public conference, was so humiliated by his defeat that he fled from Hippo. Augustine also abolished the abuse of holding banquets in the chapels of the martyrs. He took part, 8 October, 393, in the Plenary Council of Africa, presided over by Aurelius, Bishop of Carthage, and, at the request of the bishops, was obliged to deliver a discourse which, in its completed form, afterwards became the treatise "De Fide et symbolo." III. AS BISHOP OF HIPPO (396-430) Enfeebled by old age, Valerius, Bishop of Hippo, obtained the authorization of Aurelius, Primate of Africa, to associate Augustine with himself as coadjutor. Augustine had to resign himself to consecration at the hands of Megalius, Primate of Numidia. He was then forty two, and was to occupy the See of Hippo for thirty-four years. The new bishop understood well how to combine the exercise of his pastoral duties with the austerities of the religious life, and although he left his convent, his episcopal residence became a monastery where he lived a community life with his clergy, who bound themselves to observe religious poverty. Was it an order of regular clerics or of monks that he thus founded? This is a question often asked, but we feel that Augustine gave but little thought to such distinctions. Be that as it may, the episcopal house of Hippo became a
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veritable nursery which supplied the founders of the monasteries that were soon spread all over Africa and the bishops who occupied the neighbouring sees. Possidius (Vita S. August., xxii) enumerates ten of the saint's friends and disciples who were promoted to the episcopacy. Thus it was that Augustine earned the title of patriarch of the religious, and renovator of the clerical, life in Africa. But he was above all the defender of truth and the shepherd of souls. His doctrinal activities, the influence of which was destined to last as long as the Church itself, were manifold: he preached frequently, sometimes for five days consecutively, his sermons breathing a spirit of charity that won all hearts; he wrote letters which scattered broadcast through the then known world his solutions of the problems of that day; he impressed his spirit upon divers African councils at which he assisted, for instance, those of Carthage in 398, 401, 407, 419 and of Mileve in 416 and 418; and lastly struggled indefatigably against all errors. To relate these struggles were endless; we shall, therefore, select only the chief controversies and indicate in each the doctrinal attitude of the great Bishop of Hippo. A. The Manichan Controversy and the Problem of Evil After Augustine became bishop the zeal which, from the time of his baptism, he had manifested in bringing his former co-religionists into the true Church, took on a more paternal form without losing its pristine ardour 15

"let those rage against us who know not at what a bitter cost truth is attained. . . . As for me, I should show you the same forbearance that my brethren had for me when I blind, was wandering in your doctrines" (Contra Epistolam Fundamenti, iii). Among the most memorable events that occurred during this controversy was the great victory won in 404 over Felix, one of the "elect" of the Manichans and the great doctor of the sect. He was propagating his errors in Hippo, and Augustine invited him to a public conference the issue of which would necessarily cause a great stir; Felix declared himself vanquished, embraced the Faith, and, together with Augustine, subscribed the acts of the conference. In his writings Augustine successively refuted Mani (397), the famous Faustus (400), Secundinus (405), and (about 415) the fatalistic Priscillianists whom Paulus Orosius had denounced to him. These writings contain the saint's clear, unquestionable views on the eternal problem of evil, views based on an optimism proclaiming, like the Platonists, that every work of God is good and that the only source of moral evil is the liberty of creatures (De Civitate Dei, XIX, c. xiii, n. 2). Augustine takes up the defence of free will, even in man as he is, with such ardour that his works against the Manichan are an inexhaustible storehouse of arguments in this still living controversy. In vain have the Jansenists maintained that Augustine was unconsciously a Pelagian and that he afterwards acknowledged the loss of liberty through the sin of Adam. Modern critics, doubtless unfamiliar with
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Augustine's complicated system and his peculiar terminology, have gone much farther. In the "Revue d'histoire et de littrature religieuses" (1899, p. 447), M. Margival exhibits St. Augustine as the victim of metaphysical pessimism unconsciously imbibed from Manichan doctrines. "Never," says he, "will the Oriental idea of the necessity and the eternity of evil have a more zealous defender than this bishop." Nothing is more opposed to the facts. Augustine acknowledges that he had not yet understood how the first good inclination of the will is a gift of God (Retractions, I, xxiii, n, 3); but it should be remembered that he never retracted his leading theories on liberty, never modified his opinion upon what constitutes its essential condition, that is to say, the full power of choosing or of deciding. Who will dare to say that in revising his own writings on so important a point he lacked either clearness of perception or sincerity? B. The Donatist Controversy and the Theory of the Church The Donatist schism was the last episode in the Montanist and Novatian controversies which had agitated the Church from the second century. While the East was discussing under varying aspects the Divine and Christological problem of the Word, the West, doubtless because of its more practical genius, took up the moral question of sin in all its forms. The general problem was the holiness of the Church; could the sinner be pardoned, and remain in her bosom? In Africa
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the question especially concerned the holiness of the hierarchy. The bishops of Numidia, who, in 312, had refused to accept as valid the consecration of Ccilian, Bishop of Carthage, by a traditor, had inaugurated the schism and at the same time proposed these grave questions: Do the hierarchical powers depend upon the moral worthiness of the priest? How can the holiness of the Church be compatible with the unworthiness of its ministers? At the time of Augustine's arrival in Hippo, the schism had attained immense proportions, having become identified with political tendencies - perhaps with a national movement against Roman domination. In any event, it is easy to discover in it an undercurrent of antisocial revenge which the emperors had to combat by strict laws. The strange sect known as "Soldiers of Christ," and called by Catholics Circumcelliones (brigands, vagrants), resembled the revolutionary sects of the Middle Ages in point of fanatic destructiveness a fact that must not be lost sight of, if the severe legislation of the emperors is to be properly appreciated. The history of Augustine's struggles with the Donatists is also that of his change of opinion on the employment of rigorous measures against the heretics; and the Church in Africa, of whose councils he had been the very soul, followed him in the change. This change of views is solemnly attested by the Bishop of Hippo himself, especially in his Letters, xciii (in the year 408). In the beginning, it was by conferences and a friendly
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controversy that he sought to re-establish unity. He inspired various conciliatory measures of the African councils, and sent ambassadors to the Donatists to invite them to re-enter the Church, or at least to urge them to send deputies to a conference (403). The Donatists met these advances at first with silence, then with insults, and lastly with such violence that Possidius Bishop of Calamet, Augustine's friend, escaped death only by flight, the Bishop of Bagaa was left covered with horrible wounds, and the life of the Bishop of Hippo himself was several times attempted (Letter lxxxviii, to Januarius, the Donatist bishop). This madness of the Circumcelliones required harsh repression, and Augustine, witnessing the many conversions that resulted therefrom, thenceforth approved rigid laws. However, this important restriction must be pointed out: that St. Augustine never wished heresy to be punishable by death - Vos rogamus ne occidatis (Letter c, to the Proconsul Donatus). But the bishops still favoured a conference with the schismatics, and in 410 an edict issued by Honorius put an end to the refusal of the Donatists. A solemn conference took place at Carthage, in June, 411, in presence of 286 Catholic, and 279 Donatist bishops. The Donatist spokesmen were Petilian of Constantine, Primian of Carthage, and Emeritus of Csarea; the Catholic orators, Aurelius and Augustine. On the historic question then at issue, the Bishop of Hippo proved the innocence of Ccilian and his consecrator Felix, and in the dogmatic debate he established the Catholic thesis that the Church, as long as it is upon earth, can, without losing its holiness,
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tolerate sinners within its pale for the sake of converting them. In the name of the emperor the Proconsul Marcellinus sanctioned the victory of the Catholics on all points. Little by little Donatism died out, to disappear with the coming of the Vandals. So amply and magnificently did Augustine develop his theory on the Church that, according to Specht "he deserves to be named the Doctor of the Church as well as the "Doctor of Grace "; and Mhler (Dogmatik, 351) is not afraid to write: "For depth of feeling and power of conception nothing written on the Church since St. Paul's time, is comparable to the works of St. Augustine." He has corrected, perfected, and even excelled the beautiful pages of St. Cyprian on the Divine institution of the Church, its authority, its essential marks, and its mission in the economy of grace and the administration of the sacraments. The Protestant critics, Dorner, Bindemann, Bhringer and especially Reuter, loudly proclaim, and sometimes even exaggerate, this rle of the Doctor of Hippo; and while Harnack does not quite agree with them in every respect he does not hesitate to say (History of Dogma, II, c. iii): "It is one of the points upon which Augustine specially affirms and strengthens the Catholic idea.... He was the first [!] to transform the authority of the Church into a religious power, and to confer upon practical religion the gift of a doctrine of the Church." He was not the first, for Dorner acknowledges (Augustinus, 88) that Optatus of Mileve had expressed the basis of the same doctrines. Augustine, however, deepened, systematized, and
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completed the views of St. Cyprian and Optatus. But it is impossible here to go into detail. (See Specht, Die Lehre von der Kirche nach dem hl. Augustinus, Paderborn, l892.) C. The Pelagian Controversy and the Doctor of Grace The close of the struggle against the Donatists almost coincided with the beginnings of a very grave theological dispute which not only was to demand Augustine's unremitting attention up to the time of his death, but was to become an eternal problem for individuals and for the Church. Farther on we shall enlarge upon Augustine's system; here we need only indicate the phases of the controversy. Africa, where Pelagius and his disciple Celestius had sought refuge after the taking of Rome by Alaric, was the principal centre of the first Pelagian disturbances; as early as 412 a council held at Carthage condemned Pelagians for their attacks upon the doctrine of original sin. Among other books directed against them by Augustine was his famous "De natur et grati." Thanks to his activity the condemnation of these innovators, who had succeeded in deceiving a synod convened at Diospolis in Palestine, was reiterated by councils held later at Carthage and Mileve and confirmed by Pope Innocent I (417). A second period of Pelagian Intrigues developed at Rome, but Pope Zosimus, whom the stratagems of Celestius had for a moment deluded, being enlightened by Augustine, pronounced the solemn condemnation of
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these heretics in 418. Thenceforth the combat was conducted in writing against Julian of Eclanum, who assumed the leadership of the party and violently attacked Augustine. Towards 426 there entered the lists a school which afterwards acquired the name of Semipelagian, the first members being monks of Hadrumetum in Africa, who were followed by others from Marseilles, led by Cassian, the celebrated abbot of Saint-Victor. Unable to admit the absolute gratuitousness of predestination, they sought a middle course between Augustine and Pelagius, and maintained that grace must be given to those who merit it and denied to others; hence goodwill has the precedence, it desires, it asks, and God rewards. Informed of their views by Prosper of Aquitaine, the holy Doctor once more expounded, in "De Prdestinatione Sanctorum," how even these first desires for salvation are due to the grace of God, which therefore absolutely controls our predestination. D. Struggles against Arianism and Closing Years In 426 the holy Bishop of Hippo, at the age of seventytwo, wishing to spare his episcopal city the turmoil of an election after his death, caused both clergy and people to acclaim the choice of the deacon Heraclius as his auxiliary and successor, and transferred to him the administration of externals. Augustine might then have enjoyed some rest had Africa not been agitated by the undeserved disgrace and the revolt of Count Boniface (427). The Goths, sent by the Empress Placidia to
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oppose Boniface, and the Vandals, whom the latter summoned to his assistance, were all Arians. Maximinus, an Arian bishop, entered Hippo with the imperial troops. The holy Doctor defended the Faith at a public conference (428) and in various writings. Being deeply grieved at the devastation of Africa, he laboured to effect a reconciliation between Count Boniface and the empress. Peace was indeed re stablished, but not with Genseric, the Vandal king. Boniface, vanquished, sought refuge in Hippo, whither many bishops had already fled for protection and this well fortified city was to suffer the horrors of an eighteen months' siege. Endeavouring to control his anguish, Augustine continued to refute Julian of Eclanum; but early in the siege he was stricken with what he realized to be a fatal illness, and, after three months of admirable patience and fervent prayer, departed from this land of exile on 28 August, 430, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. Eugne Portali Transcribed by Dave Ofstead

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ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO354-430 Men approach St. Augustine with mixed feelings. So high does he tower above those of his generation, perhaps above those of every generation, that they look up to him with a certain awe, almost with fear. The very sight of his works, more, probably, than those of any other writer of the past, frightens us and puts us off; someone has seriously said that merely to read what Augustine has written would take an ordinary man a life-time. Nevertheless, to one who will have courage and come near, it is strange how human, and even how little in his greatness, Augustine is found to be. "I liked to play": "delectabat ludere," he said of himself in his childhood; and there is something of that same delight to be found in him to the very end of his days. Augustine was born in Thagaste, a Roman town in Numidia, North Africa. It was a free town, and also a market-town, set at a place where many Roman roads converged; to it the caravans from east and west brought their merchandise, in it the luxury of Rome was repeated, with the added freedom of Africa. He was the eldest son of one Patricius, a well-to-do citizen of the place, a pagan but not a fanatic, whose ideal of life was to get the most out of it he could, without being too particular as to the means. Patricius, at the age of forty, had married Monica, a girl of seventeen, a Christian on both her father's and her mother's side. This marriage
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alone would seem to imply a certain laxity of faith in the family; the fact that Monica owed most of her religious and moral training to an old nurse confirms it. It cannot be said that the marriage was a happy one. Perhaps it was not intended to be; it was a marriage of convenience and no more. For the pagan Patricius it meant life with a woman who, the older she became, and the more difficult her situation, clung the more to her own religion, and would have nothing to do with his free and easy ways, to call them by no worse name. For Monica it meant a life of constant self-suppression; of abuse even to blows, for Patricius had fits of violent temper; of slander on the part of those who were only too anxious to pander to Patricius, or were jealous of the influence her meek disposition had upon him. Three children were born to them, Augustine the first, but none of them were baptized. In those days a middle course was found. As children were born they were inscribed as catechumens; the baptism might come later, perhaps whenever there was danger of death. Augustine grew up among pagan children, apparently in a pagan school, and his morals from the first were no better than theirs. He could steal, he could cheat, he could lie with the best of them; to do these things cleverly and successfully was a mark of talent rather than of vice. He went to school, and he hated it, both its restraint, and the things he had to learn. He was thrashed repeatedly, and when he came home received little commiseration, even from his own mother. His
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boyhood, from his own description, was an unhappy time; it tended to make him all the more bitter and reckless. But he was a precociously clever child, and in spite of his thrashings, which only made him more obstinate, and his own idleness, he learned more than his companions. Both his father and his mother became ambitious for him; they decided to give him a better education than could be given him in Thagaste. He was sent to Madaura, a prosperous city thirty miles away. But thirty miles, in those days, and for a boy such as Augustine, was a great, separating distance. Here at last he was his own master; the longing he had always had to do just what he liked, without let or hindrance from anyone, was allowed free scope. He studied the pagan classics, for he loved to read and read; he studied not only their literature, but also their ideals and their life. These were exemplified all around him, and he could take part in them as much as he pleased; the pursuit of pleasure at all costs, the wild orgies of the carnivals of Bacchus, the worship of the decadent Roman ideal, smart, sensual, excusing, boldly daring, laughing with approval at every excess of sinful love. Such was the atmosphere the clever, imaginative, craving, reckless Augustine was made to breathe in the city of Apuleius at the age of fifteen; and to face it he had nothing but the flattering encouragement of a pagan father, the timid fear of a Christian mother whose religion he had already learned to despise. He soon became simply a pagan, a non-moral pagan at the most critical time of his life.

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The consequences were inevitable. Augustine came home from Madaura addicted to the lowest vices. What was worse, he seemed to have no conscience left; worse still, he had a father who looked upon the same excess as a proof of manhood, the sowing of wild oats now which gave promise of great things later. Only one chain held him, the love he had for his mother. He laughed at her pious ways, he deliberately defied and hurt her; but underneath, though he tried not to own it to himself, his respect and admiration and affection for her had steadily increased. It was the same on her side, which made the bond all the stronger. Monica's life with her husband had been unhappy and loveless; and the love she longed to give was poured out on her favorite yet reckless son. The more she loved him, the more she was appalled at the life he was already living, and at the future to which it must inevitably lead. She blamed herself for having been partially the cause of his downfall. She had encouraged the plan of his going to Madaura; she had given him little to protect him while he was there; she would do all she could to win him back, though it was to be the struggle of a life- time. This made her strive all the more for her own perfection; if she was to influence him at all she must herself be true. Since she could say little to him, she would pray for him; she watched him, but it could only be from a distance. And Augustine, though he made nothing of it at the time, though he often took delight in hurting her by his boast of wickedness, knew nevertheless that she prayed, and watched, and loved;
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and he returned that love, and it grew. The next step in Augustine's career was to Carthage. It was the center of learning and pleasure in North Africa, and Augustine craved for both. There he lived, from the age of seventeen, learning and loving as he wished, for there was no one to check or guide him. "I went to Carthage," he wrote later, "where shameful love bubbled round me like boiling oil." But he was wise enough to know that this was the opportunity of his life; in the midst of his evil living he worked hard. At this point his father died, a Christian at the last, which cannot but have had an effect on the son; and the pinch of poverty, in consequence of the death, made him work all the harder. He soon became known as the gayest, the most gifted, the most sensual scholar in the University of Carthage; a threefold triumph, of each of which he was proud. In the schools of Rhetoric his declamations were proposed to other students as models; outside the schools he was admired and courted as the reckless votary of love. But the ways of God are strange. One day, in the midst of this thoughtless life, he was studying Cicero. He lighted on the following passage: "If man has a soul, as the greatest philosophers maintain, and if that soul is immortal and divine, then must it needs be that the more it has been steeped in reason, and true love, and the pursuit of truth, and the less it has been stained by vice and passion, so much the more surely it will rise above this earth and ascend into
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the skies." This sentence, suddenly come upon, was, he tells us, the beginning of light. It made him restless; his eyes continually went back to it; he began to ask himself whether, after all, he was as happy as he affected. He looked for a solution elsewhere, whether a confirmation of the teaching, or a quieting of his conscience, he did not care. He paid more attention to the other pagan philosophers, but they did not lead him far. He took to the Bible, and for a time it held him; but soon that, too, became insipid, and he put it away. He knew something about the Manichees, with their doctrine of a good and an evil spirit. They claimed to have a solution for all such problems; above all they pretended to solve them without too much surrender of the good things of this world. Sin could not be resisted, passion was a necessity; the doctrine suited Augustine very well as a check to this new thing, conscience, and he accepted it. Augustine became a Manichee. We may now leap over some years. Augustine returned to Thagaste, and there set up a school; his restless soul soon tired of it, the provincialism of the place stifled him, and he went once more to Carthage. There he opened another school of Rhetoric; it was a great success, but being a youth of little over twenty he had need to supplement his knowledge with further reading. Nothing came amiss to this voracious mind; he read anything and everything that came in his way, the classics, the occult sciences, astrology, the fine arts.
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Meanwhile, more as a practice in dialectic than from any sense of conviction, he set himself to the task of converting his friends to Manicheism, and in part succeeded. At last, again grown restless, and devoured with an ambition for which Carthage had grown too small, he decided to seek his fortune in Rome, the center and capital of the whole world. In spite of his mother's appeals, in spite of remonstrance from the woman he had ruined but who had been faithful to him, he eluded them both and slipped away, to make a name for himself as a conjurer in words in the heart of the Empire. But the design of God was very different. Augustine's sojourn in Rome was anything but the success he had anticipated. Scarcely had he arrived when he fell ill, and had to depend on the charity of condescending friends till he recovered, a fact which galled him exceedingly. As soon as he was well, he set about drawing pupils round him; this, in self-occupied, bustling Rome, was a more difficult matter than it had been in Carthage or Thagaste. Moreover the climate and the life of the place began to tell upon him. He could not endure its stifling air, its cobbled and uneven streets, while the coarseness of its manners disgusted this man of the world who, though steeped in vice as much as any Roman, still insisted on refinement. The gluttony and drunkenness he saw everywhere about him, the coarse outcries raised from time to time, in the theaters and elsewhere, against all foreign immigrants, the lack of interest in things intellectual even among those who claimed to be most
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cultured, the childish imitation, among the rich and socalled upper classes, of eastern splendor and extravagance, the multitudinous temples of all kinds of gods, disgorging every day their besotted votaries--the heart of Rome being eaten out by the serpent of Asia-the contempt for human life, above all for the life of a slave or a captured foe, all these things, in spite of his own depravity, began to tell upon his mind. He was more alone now, and was forced to reflect; his life was in the making and he had to look into the future; if he continued to sin, to his own disgust he found that he did so, not because it satisfied any desire, or because it gave him any pleasure, but because he could not help it. He knew that he was its slave, whatever he might appear, however he might boast of liberty. Long since had Manicheism lost its hold upon him; as he had once used his dialectic in its favor, so now it amused him to tear it to tatters. He clung to it still, for it provided him with a convenient cloak with which to cover and excuse the life which he was at present powerless to check; but in his heart he did not believe in its tenets any longer. Then another force came into his life. Augustine had kept his school open in Rome with no little difficulty, not because he was not successful, but because his pupils would often go away leaving him unpaid. From sheer and undeserved poverty, it seemed he would have to return to Africa. Suddenly a professor's chair at Milan was offered for competition, and Milan, for many reasons, had come to mean more to Augustine than Rome itself. Milan, not Rome, was now the city of the
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Emperor and his court; Milan was the center of culture and fashion; above all, it was the home of Ambrose, and Ambrose was a name that was ever on the lips of any master of rhetoric. Augustine competed for the post, and with the help of sundry friends obtained it. He went to Milan; he sought out Ambrose, first to criticize and judge as a master of letters, later to discover a friend. It was not long before, to his own surprise, he was pouring out his now miserable soul into the bishop's ear. Still that did not come all at once. It would seem that the plain straightforward Roman, though a better scholar, in many ways, than Augustine, never quite understood the eager, melancholy, sensitive and sensuous African, who, nevertheless, was by this time straining for a guide to lead him to the truth. The days passed on into years. The young and ambitious rhetorician had found solid ground at last, and Milan took him to its heart. Great men and wealthy noticed him, invited him to their mansions; Augustine began to tell himself that he could wish for nothing better than to be as one of them. He would settle down, content with that goal; he would marry and become respectable, according to the standard of these men of the world; he would put away the woman he had wronged, and the rest would easily be condoned. He made a first step--and he failed; the ending of one fascination did but open the way to another. He told himself that he could not help but sin; it was part of his nature, his manner of life had made it a necessity. Then why trouble any more? One day, as he came home from a triumphant speech delivered before the Emperor,
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drunk with the praises showered on him, an intoxicated man lurched across his path, reveling in coarse merriment. Why should he not live as that man lived? Not it was true, in the same brutish way; but there was a drunkenness that would suit him, which would let him live for the day, without giving the rest a moment's reflection. Nevertheless, as all this self-questioning showed, a new thing had awakened in him, and he could not make it sleep. He listened to Ambrose when he preached, ostensibly to study him as a rhetorician; he came away forgetting the rhetoric, but with a burning arrow in his heart. More and more he saw what he must do, if he would be even what his own ideal of himself pictured to him; he saw it, but to do it was quite another thing. He listened to the Church's liturgy; he watched the people at their prayers in full contentment all around him; he longed even to tears that he might be one with them. Still he could not bring himself to pay the price. Let us listen to him here as he tells the story of his conflict at this time. Thus he writes: "O my God, let me with a thankful heart remember and confess to thee thy mercies on me. Let my very bones be steeped in thy love, and let them cry out: Who is like to thee, O Lord? (Ps. 35, 10) Thou hast broken my bonds asunder; I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving (Ps. 116, 16, 17). How thou hast broken them openly I will declare; and all who adore thee, when they hear my tale, shall say: Blessed is the Lord,
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in heaven and on earth; great and glorious is His name. "The enemy held my will captive; therefore he kept me, chained down and bound. For out of a froward will lust had sprung; and lust pampered had become custom; and custom indulged had become necessity. These were the links of the chain; this was the bondage in which I was bound, and that new will which was already born in me, freely to serve thee, wholly to enjoy thee, O God, the only true joy, was not yet able to subdue my former willfulness, strengthened by the wantonness of years. So did my two wills, one new, the other old, one spiritual, the other carnal, fight within me, and by their discord undo my soul." More and more the truth grew upon him, yet Augustine could not bring himself to act. In a succession of passages he dwells upon his hesitation; they are among the most tragically dramatic pages that he ever wrote. Let us hear some of them. "Thou didst on all sides shew me that what thou didst say was true, and by the truth I was convicted. I had nothing at all to answer but those dull and dreary words: Anon, anon; or, Presently; or, Leave me alone but a little while. But my Presently, presently, came to no present, and my Little while lasted long." "What words did I not use against myself! With scourges of condemnation I lashed my soul, to force it to follow me in my effort to go after thee. Yet it drew back; it refused to follow, and without a word of excuse.
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Its arguments were confuted, its self- defense was spent. There remained no more than mute shrinking; it feared, as it would death itself, to have that disease of habit healed whereby it was wasting to death." "Thus I lay, soul-sick and tormented, chiding myself more vehemently than ever, rolling and writhing in my bondage, longing for the fetter to be wholly broken which alone now held me, but yet did hold me secure. And thou, O Lord, didst harry me within with thy merciless mercy; thou didst multiply the lashes of fear and shame, lest I should again give way, and lest I should fail to break this last remaining bond, and it should recover strength, and bind me down the faster. I said within myself: Let it be done at once, let it be done now; and even as I spoke I all but did it. I all but did it, but I did it not. Still I sank back to my former place; I stood where I was and took breath again. Once more I tried, and wanted somewhat less to make me succeed, and again somewhat less, and I all but touched and laid hold of the object of my longing; yet again I came not at it, nor touched it, nor laid hold of it. I still recoiled; I would not die to death that I might live to life." "These petty toys of toys, these vanities of vanities, my longtime fascinations, still held me. They plucked at the garment of my flesh, and murmured caressingly: Dost thou cast us off? From this moment are we to be with thee no more for ever? From this moment shall this delight or that be no more lawful for thee for ever?" "The time came when I scarcely heard them. For now
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they did not openly appear, they did not contradict me; instead they stood as it were behind my back, and muttered their lament, and pulled furtively at my cloak, and begged me, as I stood to go, but to look back on them once more. Thus did their shackles hinder me, and I shrank from shaking myself free from them, that I might burst my bonds and leap forward whither I was called. At the last some habit would whisper in my ear: Dost thou think that thou canst live without these things?" But the liberation came at last. Monica, his mother, had prayed on; she had long since come to Milan to be near her son. She had shared his successes with him, and had even joined in the congratulations, but most of her time had been spent in the church, so much so that she had won the attention of Ambrose the Bishop. One day, on meeting Augustine, he congratulated him on having such a mother. That chance word, it would seem, was the beginning of the last act in the drama. Augustine was flattered with a worthy flattering; he was glad for his mother's sake and his own, and the love within began to take on a new warmth. On such little things may great destinies depend. And in the meantime, Augustine himself, though continually beaten, did not give up the struggle. If he could not face the hardest ordeal, at least he could do something. One by one he pushed the shackles away; first the bondage that compelled him to live in sin, then that of his false philosophy. Next he ceased to be even by profession a Manichee. Last of all he laid aside his office as
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municipal orator; it is a proof of the refining process through which he had by this time gone when he tells us that he had grown ashamed of the lies he had to tell for the sake of beautiful language. At length the final grace came, and Augustine received it. "I was tired of devouring time and of being devoured by it," he writes; he must decide one way or the other. He had come to Milan a skeptic; he had by this time left that far behind. The evidence of a loving and a patient God, the truth of Jesus Christ, the peace and contentment of those who received Him and lived by Him, the summing up of all the philosophers had to say in the teaching of the Bible, the example of great men before him, who had suffered as he now suffered, had seen as he was now beginning to see, had made the leap and had found rest and peace, all these things crowded in upon him, and he knew what he should do. On the other hand was the surrender, the tearing away from all those things, good and evil, which hitherto had made life sweet, or at least as sweet as one like him could ever hope to find it. He could not do it. He despised himself for his hesitation but he could not move. He despised the Roman world which he now knew so well but he could not leave it. Besides, by this time he was ill; he was not himself. To make a change under these conditions was imprudent; when he was well again, he would never be able to persevere, and to fall back, once he had repented, would be only to make his second state worse than the first. He could not decide; even if he decided, it seemed to him that he could not make
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himself act. He must get someone to help him. He could not go to Ambrose; Ambrose had done for him all he was able and yet so far had failed. There was an old man, Simplicianus; he had been the confessor of Ambrose. In desperation he would go to him. And Simplicianus received him, and humored him; humored him even in his pride, pointing out to him the nobility of truth and sacrifice. There were set before Augustine pictures of St. Antony in the desert and his followers, the hermits of Egypt, who at that time were the talk of Christian Rome. They had surrendered all, yet they were simple men with not much learning. Augustine was in his garden; he thought he was alone. He lay down beneath a tree; his tears wet the ground. "How long?" he cried, "how long shall this be? It is always tomorrow and tomorrow. Why not this hour an end to all my meanness?" As he spoke a little child in a house close by was singing some kind of nursery-rhyme, and the refrain was this "Take up and read, take up and read." Mechanically Augustine stretched out his hand to a book he had brought with him. It was St. Paul's Epistles. He took it up, opened it at random, and read: "Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof." Suddenly all was quiet. He knew his decision had been made, and that he had the power to execute it. There
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was no more trouble, Augustine rose from where he lay, went into his mother's room, and there at her feet surrendered his past for ever. Soon he was at the feet of Ambrose, he had been lost and now at last he had found himself. He was at the time just thirty- three years of age. He celebrates his victory in the following passage: "O Lord, I am thy servant; I am thy servant and the son of thy handmaid. Thou hast broken my bonds asunder, I will offer to thee the sacrifice of praise (Ps. m6 16, 17). Let my heart and my tongue praise thee; yea, let all my bones say: O Lord, who is like to thee? Let them proclaim it; and do thou in return answer me, and say unto my soul I am thy salvation (Ps. 35, 10). Who am I, and what am I? What an evil thing have been my deeds, or if not my deeds my words, or if not my words my Will? But thou, O Lord, art good and merciful, and thy right hand hath reached down into the abysmal blackness of my death, and from the bottom of my heart hath emptied out its deep of corruption. And thy gift was this, no longer to will what I willed, but to will what thou didst will. How came it that after all those years, after it was lost in that deep and darksome labyrinth, my free will was called forth in a moment to submit my neck to thy easy yoke, and my shoulders to thy light burden, O Christ Jesus, my Helper and my Redeemer (Ps. 19, 4)? How sweet did it at once become to me to be without the sweetness of those baubles! What I feared to be parted from, it was now a joy to part with. For thou didst cast them from me, thou the true and richest sweetness. Thou didst cast them forth, and in
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their place didst substitute thyself, sweeter than all delight, though not to flesh and blood, brighter than all light, but more hidden than the lowest deep, higher than all honor, but not to them that are high in their own conceits. Now my soul was free; . . . and my infant tongue spoke to thee freely, my light, my riches, my health, the Lord my God." For the purposes of this study we do not need to follow Augustine too closely through the rest of his career. He was still, to the world about him, the brilliant professor of Milan; only a few of his friends knew of the change that had taken place. He would continue his lectures; there should be no sensation about him. But his health, never strong, had been shaken by the ordeal; it gave him a reason to retire to the villa of a friend at Cassicium, and there for a time he took up his abode. It was a blessed interval. During that period of rest the longing for solitude came over him; a longing which he never lost during all the remainder of his active days. He was still Augustine, the half- pagan; the saint was yet to be formed. The love of argument still delighted him, and that in surroundings that made life on earth most sweet; the comforts of ease, the pleasure of congenial companions, the delight in everything that his eyes could gaze upon. If he laid aside his lectures in Milan, none the less he went on teaching in his new home; but his lessons were drawn from the good things about him, the light in the sky at dawn, the noise of running waters, the goodly warmth of the sun in his veins. By means such as these the natural man was clarified, prepared for
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the great things that were yet to come. That he might begin again he must leave Milan and Rome, and return to his native Thagaste. On the way his party stopped at Ostia; there took place the memorable scene which he shared with his mother, Monica, when, as he tells us, her conversation led him up to a vision of God he had never known before; there, too, his mother died, and the loss almost broke his heart. He returned to Carthage and thence quickly made his way to Thagaste. Now he could begin in real earnest; and he began as he had learned others had begun before him. His inheritance, now that his mother was dead, he distributed to the poor; for himself, he would turn his house into a monastery, and with his friends, would live a life of prayer, and study, and retirement. But this was not to be. Already he was famous in Thagaste; and there came a day when, as was the manner of those times, the people would have him for their priest and he was ordained. As a priest he was sent to Hippo, and there his new career began. He lived a monastic life, but his learning and preaching, first to his own people, then against the heretics about him, made it impossible that he should be hid; soon the cry was raised that he should be the bishop. The rest of his story need not concern us, the rout of the Donatists, who then threatened to dominate northern Africa, the rebuilding of the Church in true poverty of spirit, along with care for the poor, and what we would call the working-classes, the administration of the law
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which fell upon his shoulders, the incessant preaching and writing, the quantity of which at this time appalls us. We are told that he preached every day, sometimes more than once; often enough, as the words of his sermons indicate, his audience would have him continue till he had to dismiss them for their meals. What concerns us more is the inner soul of the man in the midst of all these labors. For Augustine could never forget what he had been, and the fear never forsook him that with very little he might be the same again. At the time of his consecration as bishop he asked himself with anxiety whether, with his past, and with the scars from that past still upon him, he could face the burden. From time to time old visions would revive and the passions in his soul would leap towards them; even in his old age he trembled to think that some day they might get the better of him. To suppress temptation he would work without ceasing; he would allow himself no respite. When he was not preaching, or helping other souls, he would write; when he was not writing he would pray. When prayer became blank from utter weariness of age still he would pray with a pen in his hand; the only rest he would allow himself was reading, for that, he confesses, was still his delight. By means such as these he kept his other nature down. When we look at the volumes of his works we may assure ourselves that one at least of the motives which produced them was the determination in Augustine's soul to keep his lower nature in control by

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incessant labors. Nevertheless labor alone would never have saved or made the Augustine that we know. Living as he was as archbishop in a time of violence, when knives were easily drawn to solve the problems of theology, he had himself often to act with severity. Still the heart of Augustine was an affectionate heart, if in the old days it had led him far astray, in his later life it led him no less to sanctity. While he mercilessly hammered the Donatists about him, at the same time he could address his fellow priests in words like these: "Keep this in mind, my brothers; practice it and preach it with meekness that shall never fail. Love the men you fight, kill only their lie. Rest on truth in all humility; defend it but with no cruelty. Pray for those whom you oppose; pray for them while you correct them." Yet more than that was his ever increasing hunger after God. In the time of his conversion he shows us how this hunger proved his salvation; then he uttered the memorable sentence by which he is best known: "Thou hast made us, O Lord, for thyself, and our heart shall find no rest till it rest in thee." As the years went on, and as he grew in understanding of this goal of all affection, the hunger was only the more intensified. There is a pathetic scene recorded in his later life, when he gathered his people about him and complained to them that they would not leave him time
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to pray. With the simplicity of a child he reminded them that this had been part of the bargain when he had become their bishop; it was their part of the bargain and they had not kept it. He asked them, now that he was growing old, to renew their engagement, to permit him to have some days in the week when he might be alone; then they might do with him what they would. They promised; but again the promise was not kept. Circumstances were against him and them; he was living in an age when the old order was being shaken to its foundations, and there was need of a man to build a new world on its ruins. That man was Augustine, and while his eyes and his heart strained after heaven, his intellect and preaching had perforce to attend to the raising of the City of God. But it was just for this purpose that Augustine had been made. He knew the pagan world and depicted it as no man has done from his time till now; the picture he draws is as true today as it was then. And equally true and efficacious is his antidote. As he himself had to grope through his own darkness till he came to God, and then, and then only, saw all in its right perspective, so he told mankind that they would find no solution of their problems in so-called peace, in shirking all restraint, in substituting law for morality, in stifling every voice that ventured to denounce evil-doing, in finding equivocal phrases which seemed to condone all sin. They would find it only where alone it could be found; the world would find no rest till it found it in

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God. Augustine did not live to see so much as the dawn of the new day which he heralded; on the contrary, his sun went down, and there came over Africa and Hippo the blackest night. As the old man sat in his palace the news was brought to him of the wanton destruction carried out by the Arian Vandals. Nothing was being spared; to this day Northern Africa has not recovered from the scourge. The word vandalism passed into the language of Europe at that time, and has never since been superseded. He heard it all, he appealed to the Roman ruler to defend the right; he was listened to, and then he was betrayed. Still he did not move. With energy he called on his priests to stay with their flocks, and if need be to die with them. At length came the turn for Hippo to be besieged by land and sea. In the third month of the siege Augustine fell ill, probably of one of the fevers which a siege engenders. He grew worse; he knew he was dying; he made a general confession and then, at last, asked that he might be left alone with God. Lying on his bed he heard the din of battle in the distance, and as his mind began to wander he asked himself whether the end of the world had come. But he quickly recovered. No; it was not that. Had not Christ said: "I am with you always, even to the end of the world"? Some day, somehow, the world would be saved. "Non tollit Gothus quod custodit Christus," he told himself, and with this certain hope for mankind he went away to the home he had once described as the place "where we are at rest, where we see as we are seen, where we love
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and are loved." It was the fifth day of the Calends of September, August 28th, 430. This excerpt is taken from the book SAINTS FOR SINNERS by Alban Goodier, S.J.

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AUGUSTINUM HIPPONENSEM (Augustine Of Hippo)


Pope John Paul II

Apostolic Letter to the bishops, priests, religious families and faithful of the whole Catholic Church on the occasion of the 16th centenary of the conversion of St. Augustine, Bishop and Doctor, 28 August 1986. Venerable brothers and beloved Sons and Daughters: Greetings and the Apostolic Blessing! Augustine of Hippo, who, scarcely one year after his death, was called "one of the best teachers" of the Church by my distant predecessor, St. Celestine I,[1] has been present ever since in the life of the Church and in the mind and culture of the whole western world. In a similar fashion, other Roman Pontiffs have proposed the example of his way of life and the writings that embody his teachings as an object of contemplation and imitation, and very many Councils have often drawn copiously from his writings. Pope Leo XIII praised his philosophical teachings in the Encyclical Aeterni Patris;[2] later, Pius XI made a brief synthesis of his virtues and teachings in the Encyclical Ad salutem humani generis, declaring that, of those who have flourished from the beginnings of the human race down to our own days, noneor, at most, very fewcould rank with Augustine, for the very great acuteness of his genius, for the richness and sublimity of his teachings, and finally for his holiness of life and defense of Catholic truth.[3] Paul VI later affirmed: "Indeed, over and above the shining example he gives of the qualities common to all the Fathers, it may be
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said that all the thought-currents of the past meet in his works and form the source which provides the whole doctrinal tradition of succeeding ages."[4] I too have added my voice to those of my predecessors, when I expressed my strong desire "that his philosophical, theological and spiritual doctrine be studied and spread, so that he may continue ... his teaching in the Church, a humble but at the same time enlightened teaching which speaks above all of Christ and love."[5] On another occasion, I urged in particular the spiritual sons of this great saint "to keep the fascination of St. Augustine alive and attractive even in modern society." This is an excellent ideal that must fire us with enthusiasm, because "the exact and heartfelt knowledge of his life awakens the thirst for God, the attraction of Christ, the love for wisdom and truth, the need for grace, prayer, virtue, fraternal charity, and the yearning for eternal happiness."[6] I am very happy, accordingly, that the propitious circumstance of the sixteenth centenary of his conversion and baptism offers me the opportunity to evoke his brilliant figure once again. This commemoration will be at the same time a thanksgiving to God for the gift that He has made to the Church, and through her to the whole human race, with this wonderful conversion. It will also be a very fitting occasion to recall to all that this convert, when he had become a bishop, was a marvelous example to pastors in his intrepid defense of the true faith, or, as he would say, of the "virginity" of the faith.[7] He was likewise the genius who constructed a philosophy that can truly be called Christian
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because of its harmony with the faith, and a tireless promoter of spiritual and religious perfection.

I We know the progress of his conversion from his own works written in the solitude of Cassiciacum before his baptism,[8] and above all from the famous Confessions, a work that is simultaneously autobiography, philosophy, theology, mysticism and poetry, a work in which those who thirst for truth and know their own limitations have always discovered their own selves. Toward the end of his life, he wrote: "Which of my works succeeded more often in being known and loved than the books of my Confessions?"[9] History has never contradicted this judgment, but has amply confirmed it. Even today, the Confessions of St. Augustine are widely read, since the richness of their interior insight and religious emotion have a profound effect on the minds of men and women, stimulating them and disturbing them. This is true not only of believers; even one without faith, but in search at least of a certainty that will allow him to understand himself, his deep aspirations and his torments, reads this work with advantage. The conversion of St. Augustine, an event totally dominated by the need to find the truth, has much to teach the men and women of today, who are so often mistaken about the greatest question of all life. It is well known that this conversion took a wholly individual path, because it was not a case of arriving for the first time at the Catholic faith, but of rediscovering it. He had lost it, convinced that in so doing, he was abandoning only the
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Church, not Christ. He had been brought up in a Christian manner by his mother,[10] the pious and holy Monica.[11] In virtue of this education, Augustine always remained not only a believer in God, in providence and in the future life,[12] but also a believer in Christ, whose name he "had drunk in," as he says, "with my mother's milk."[13] After he had returned to the faith of the Catholic Church, he said that he had returned "to the faith which was instilled in me as a child and which had entered into my very marrow."[14] If one wishes to understand his interior evolution, and what is perhaps the most profound aspect of his personality and his thought, one must take this fact as one's starting-point. He awoke at the age of nineteen to the love of wisdom, when he read the Hortensius of Cicero"That book altered my way of thinking . . . and I desired wisdom's immortality with an incredible ardor in my heart."[15] He loved the truth deeply, and sought it always with all the strength of his soul: "O Truth, Truth, how deep even then was the yearning for you in the inmost depths of my mind![16] Despite this love for truth, Augustine fell into serious errors. Scholars who look for the reasons for this indicate three directions: first, a mistaken, account of the relationship between reason and faith, so that he would have to choose between them; second, in the supposed contrast between Christ and the Church, with the consequent conviction that it was necessary to abandon the Church in order to belong more fully to Christ; and third, the desire to free himself from the consciousness of sin, not by means of the remission of sin
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through the working of grace, but by means of the denial of the involvement of human responsibility in the sin itself. The first error consisted, therefore, in a certain spirit of rationalism which led Augustine to believe that "one should believe those who teach, rather than those who issue commands."[17] With this spirit, he read the Sacred Scriptures and felt himself repelled by the mysteries that they contain, mysteries that need to be accepted with humble faith. When he spoke later to his people about this period of his life, he said: "I who speak to you was once deceived, when I first came to the divine Scriptures as a youth, preferring to discuss intellectual points rather than to seek piety.... In my wretchedness, I thought that I could fly, and left the nest; and before I could fly, I fell."[18] It was at this time that Augustine met the Manichaeans, heard them and followed them. The chief reason for this was that "they said that, having set aside the terrible authority, they would lead to God by pure and simple reason those willing to listen to them, freed from all errors"[19] Augustine then presented himself as "one wishing to grasp and imbibe the open and authentic truth"[20] with the force of reason alone. After long years of study, especially of philosophical study,[21] he realized that he had been deceived, but the effect of the Manichaean propaganda was to keep him convinced that the truth was not to be found in the Catholic Church.[22] He fell into a profound depression and indeed despaired of ever coming to know the truth: "the Academicians kept my rudder for long in the middle of the
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streams, resisting all winds."[23] It was the same love for truth which he always had within him, that rescued him from this interior crisis. He realized that it was impossible that the path to truth should be closed to the human mind; if it is not found, it is because men neglect and despise the means that will lead to the discovery of truth.[24] Strengthened by this conviction, he replies to himself: "Rather, let us seek more diligently, and not despair."[25] He therefore continued to search, and reached the harbor under the guidance of the divine grace which his mother implored for him in her supplications and abundant tears.[26] He understood that reason and faith are two forces that are to cooperate to bring the human person to know the truth,[27] and that each of these has its own primacy: faith comes first in the sequence of time, reason has the absolute primacy: "the authority is first in the order of time, but in reality the primacy belongs to the reason."[28] He understood that if faith is to be sure, it needs a divine authority, and that this is none other than the authority of Christ, the supreme teacherAugustine had never doubted this[29]and that the authority of Christ is found in the Sacred Scriptures[30] that are guaranteed by the authority of the Catholic Church.[31] With the help of the Platonist philosophers, he freed himself from the materialistic concept of being that he had taken in from Manichaeism: "Admonished by them to return to myself, I entered within myself, under Your guidance.... I entered, and I saw as with the eye of my soul ... the inalterable light above my mind."[32] It was this inalterable
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light that opened to him the immense horizons of the spirit of God. He understood that the first question to be asked about the serious question of evil, which was his great torment,[33] was not its origin, but what it was;[34] and he saw that evil is not a substance, but the lack of good: "All that exists is good. The evil about the origin of which I asked questions is not a substance."[35] He concluded that God is the creator of everything, and that no substance exists that was not created by Him.[36] Taught by his own experience of life,[37] he made the decisive discovery that sin has its origin in the will of the human person, a will that is free and weak: "It was I who willed and refused; it was I, I."[38] Although he could assert at this time that he had reached the point of arrival, this was not yet the case, because he was caught in the tentacles of a new error, the presumption that he could attain the beatifying possession of the truth by natural powers alone. An unhappy personal experience changed his opinion on this point.[39] He understood then that it is one thing to know the goal, another to reach it.[40] In order to find the necessary powers and the path itself, he took up "most eagerly," as he says, "the venerable Scripture of Your Spirit, and above all the apostle Paul."[41] He found Christ the teacher in the letters of Paul, as he had always venerated Him, but also Christ the Redeemer, the incarnate Word, the only mediator between God and men. He saw then in all its splendor "the face of philosophy"[42]the philosophy of Paul that has as its center Christ, "the power and wisdom of
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God" (1 Cor 1:24), and has other centers in faith, humility and grace; the "philosophy" that is at once wisdom and grace, so that it becomes possible not only to know one's homeland, but also to reach it.[43] Having rediscovered Christ the Redeemer and embraced Him, Augustine had returned to the harbor of the Catholic faith, to the faith in which he had been brought up by his mother: "For I had heard while still a boy about the eternal life promised to us by the God who in His humility came down to our pride."[44] The love for the truth, nourished by divine grace, overcame all errors. But the path was not yet at its end. A former plan was reborn in Augustine's mind: to consecrate himself totally to wisdom once he had found it, abandoning every earthly hope in order to possess wisdom.[45] Now he could no longer make excuses: the truth so long desired was now certain.[46] Nevertheless, he hesitated, seeking reasons to put off the decision to do this.[47] The bonds that tied him to the earthly hopes were strong: honors, money, marriage,[48] especially the last, in view of the way of life that that had become customary for him.[49] Augustine knew well that he was not forbidden to marry;[50] but he did not want to be a Catholic Christian in any other way except by renouncing the excellent ideal of the family in order to dedicate himself with "all" his soul to the love and possession of wisdom. In taking this decision which corresponded to his deepest aspirations but was in contrast to his most deeply-rooted habits, Augustine was prompted by the example of Anthony and of the monks who were
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beginning to spread in the West also and whom he came to know by chance.[51] He accused himself with great shame, "You could not do what these men and women do."[52] A deep and painful struggle ensued, which was brought to its close by divine grace once again.[53] Augustine related to his mother his serene and strong decision: "Then we went to my mother and related the matter to her: she rejoiced. We related how it had come about: she exulted in triumph and she blessed You, who are able to do more than we ask or think (Eph 3:20), because she saw that You had given her so much more, as regarded me, than she had been accustomed to ask with her unhappy and tearful groanings. For You converted me to yourself, so that I might seek neither wife nor any hope of this world."[54] From this moment, Augustine began a new life. He finished the academic yearthe harvest holidays were near[55]and withdrew to the solitude of Cassiciacum;[56] at the end of the vacation, he gave up teaching,[57] and returned to Milan at the beginning of 387. He enrolled among the catechumens and was baptized on the night of Holy SaturdayApril 2324by Ambrose, the bishop from whose preaching he had learned so much. "We were baptized, and the care of the past life fled from us. I could not have enough in those days of the wonderful sweetness of contemplating the sublimity of Your plan of salvation for the human race." He adds, bearing witness to the profound emotion of his mind, "How much I wept at the hymns and canticles, keenly moved by the sweet voices of Your Church!"[58] After baptism, Augustine's one desire was to find a suitable
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place to live with his friends according to his "holy resolution" to serve the Lord.[59] He found it in Africa, at Tagaste, his native town, where he went after the death of his mother at Ostia Tiberina[60] and after spending a few months at Rome to study the monastic movement.[61] When he arrived at Tagaste, "having now cast off from himself the cares of the world; he lived for God with those who accompanied him, in fasting, prayers, and good works, meditating on the law of the Lord by day and by night." The passionate lover of the truth wanted to dedicate his life to asceticism, to contemplation, and to the intellectual apostolate. His first biographer indeed goes on to say: "In his discourse and his books, he taught about what God had revealed to his intellect as he pondered and prayed."[62] He wrote very many books at Tagaste, as he had done at Rome and Milan and at Cassiciacum. After three years he went to Hippo, intending to look for a site to found a monastery, and to meet a friend whom he hoped to win for the monastic life. He found instead, in spite of himself, the priesthood.[63] But he did not give up his ideal: he asked and obtained permission to found a monastery, the monastery of the laymen, in which he lived, and from which many priests and many bishops came for all of Africa.[64] When he became bishop, five years later, he transformed the bishop's house into a monastery, the monastery of the clerics. Not even as priest and bishop did he abandoned the ideal conceived at the moment of his conversion. He wrote also a rule for the servants of God, which has had so much influence in the history of western

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religious life, and continues to play its part today.[65]

II I have dealt at some length with the essential points of the conversion of Augustine, because they offer so much useful teachings, not only for believers, but for all men and women of good will: they teach how easy it is to go astray on the path of life, and how difficult it is to rediscover the way of truth. But this wonderful conversion also helps us to understand better his life afterwards as monk, priest and bishop who always remained the great man who had been struck by the lightning-flash of grace: "You had shot at our heart with the arrow of Your love, and we bore Your words transfixed in our breast."[66] Above all, the conversion helps us to penetrate more easily into his thought, which was so universal and profound that it rendered incomparable and imperishable service to Christian thought, so that we have good reason to call him the common father of Christian Europe. The hidden force of his tireless search was assuredly the same force that had guided him on the path of his conversion: love for the truth. He himself indeed says: What does the soul desire more strongly than the truth?"[67] In a work of lofty theological and mystical speculation, written more out of personal need than for external requirements, he recalls this love and writes: "We are caught up by the love of seeking out the truth."[68] This time, the object of the search is the august mystery of the Trinity and the mystery of Christ, the Father's revelation, "knowledge and wisdom" of the human
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person: thus was born the great work On the Trinity. Two coordinates guided the research, which was unceasingly nourished by love: the deepening of the Catholic faith and its defense against those who denied it, such as the Manichaeans and the pagans, or who interpreted it erroneously, such as the Donatists, the Pelagians and the Arians. It is difficult to venture forth upon the sea of Augustine's thought, and even more difficult to summarize itthis indeed is almost impossible. I may however be permitted to recall some illuminating insights of this mighty thinker, for the edification of all. 1. Reason and faith First of all, there is the problem that occupied him most in his youth and to which he returned with all the force of genius and the passion of his spirit: the problem of the relationship between reason and faith. This is a perennial problem, no less acute today than yesterday, and the direction taken by human thought depends on its solution. It is a difficult problem, however, because one must pass safely between two extremes, between the fideism that despises reason and the rationalism that excludes faith. Augustine's intellectual and pastoral endeavor aimed to show, beyond any shadow of doubt, that "since we are impelled by a twin pull of gravity to learn,"[69] both forces, reason and faith, must work together. He always listened to what faith had to say, but he exalted reason no less, giving each its own primacy in time of
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importance.[70] He told all, "Believe that you may understand," but he repeated also, "Understand that you may believe."[71] He wrote a work, perennially relevant, on the usefulness of faith,[72] and explained that faith is the medicine designed to heal the eye of the spirit,[73] the unconquerable fortress for the defense of all, especially of the weak, against error,[74] the nest in which we receive the wings for the lofty flights of the spirit,[75] the short path that permits one to know, quickly, surely and without errors, the truths which lead the human person to wisdom.[76] He also emphasizes that faith is never without reason, because it is reason that shows "in what one should believe."[77] "For faith has its own eyes, by means of which it sees in a certain manner that what it does not yet see is true."[78] Therefore "no one believes anything, unless he has first thought that it is to be believed," because "to believe is itself nothing other than to think with assent . . . if faith is not' thought through, it is no faith."[79] The outcome of the discourse on the eyes of faith is the discourse on credibility, of which Augustine often speaks, adducing the reasons for credibility as if to confirm the consciousness with which he himself had returned to the Catholic faith. It is good to listen to one of these texts: "There are many things that most properly keep me in the bosom of the Catholic Church; to say nothing of the most genuine wisdom . . . let me therefore omit mention of this wisdom" (for this argument, which for Augustine was extremely strong, was not accepted by his opponents). "The consensus of peoples and races keeps me in the Church, as does the authority based on miracles, nourished by hope, increased by
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charity, strengthened by its ancient character; likewise the succession of the priests, from the very see of the apostle Peter, to whom the Lord entrusted the care of His sheep after the resurrection, down to the episcopate of today; finally, the very name of the Catholic Church keeps me in her, because it is not without reason that this Church alone has obtained such a name amid so many heresies."[80] In the great work on the City of God, which is at once apologetic and dogmatic, the problem of reason and faith becomes that of faith and culture. Augustine, who did so much to establish and promote Christian culture, solves this problem by developing three main arguments: the faithful exposition of Christian doctrine; the careful salvaging of pagan culture, to the extent that it had elements capable of being salvaged (in the area of philosophy, this was no small amount); and the insistent demonstration of the presence in Christian teaching of whatever was true and perennially valid in pagan culture, with the advantage of finding it perfected and exalted there.[81] It was not for nothing that the City of God was widely read in the middle ages; and it greatly deserves to be read today as well, as an example and stimulus to deepen the encounter of Christianity with the cultures of the peoples. An important text of Augustine may be usefully quoted here: "The heavenly city ... draws citizens from all peoples ... taking no account of what is different in customs laws and institutions; ...she neither suppresses nor destroys anything of these, but rather preserves and fosters it. The diversities that may exist in the diverse nations work together for the single goal of earthly peace, unless they obstruct the practice of the religion that teaches the worship of the one,
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true and most high God."[82] 2. God and man The other great word-pair which Augustine continuously studied is God and man. As I have said above, when he freed himself from the materialism which prevented him from having an exact concept of Godand hence the true concept of manhe made this word-pair the center of the great themes of his study,[83] and always studied the two together: man thinking of God, God thinking of man, who is His image. In the Confessions, he asks himself these two questions: "What are You for me....What am I myself for You?"[84] He brings all the resources of His thought and all the unwearying labor of his apostolate to bear on the search for an answer to these questions. He is fully convinced of the ineffability of God, so that he cries out: "Why wonder that you do not understand? For if you understand, it is not God."[85] It follows that "it is no .... small beginning of the knowledge of God, if before we are able to know what He is, we already begin to know what He is not."[86] It is necessary therefore to strive "that we should thus know God, if we are able and as far as we are able, the one who is good without quality, great without quantity, the creator not bound by necessity," and thus going through all the categories of reality that Aristotle has described.[87] Although God is transcendent and ineffable, Augustine is nevertheless able, starting from the self-awareness of the human person who knows that he exists and knows and
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loves, and encouraged by Sacred Scripture, which reveals God as the supreme Being (Ex 3:14), highest Wisdom (Wis,passim) and first Love (1 Jn 4:8), is able to illustrate this threefold notion of God: the Being from whom every being proceeds through creation from nothing, the Truth which enlightens the human mind so that it can know the truth with certainty, the Love that is the source and the goal of all true love. For God, as he so often repeats, is "the cause of what exists, the reason of thought and the ordering of living,[88] or, to use an equally famous formula, "the cause of the universe that has been created, and the light of the truth that is to be perceived, and the fountain from which happiness is to be drunk."[89] But it was above all in studying the presence of God in the human person that Augustine used his genius. This presence is both profound and mysterious. He finds God as "the eternal internal,"[90] most secret and most present[91]man seeks Him because he is absent, but knows Him and finds Him because He is present. God is present as "the creative substance of the world,"[92] as the truth that gives light,[93] as the love that attracts,[94] more intimate than what is most intimate in man, and higher than what is highest in him. Referring to the period before his conversion, Augustine says to God: "Where were You then for me, and how far away? And I was a wanderer far away from You.... But You were more internal than what was intimate in me, and higher than what was highest in me";[95] "You were with me, and I was not with You."[96] Indeed. he insists: "You were in front of me; but I had gone away from myself and did not find myself, much less find You."[97] Whoever does not find
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himself does not find God, because God is in the depths of each one of us. The human person, accordingly, cannot understand himself except in relationship to God. Augustine found ever new expressions of this great truth, as he studied the relationship of man to God and stated this in the most varied and effective way. He sees the human person as a tension directed toward God; his words, "You have made us for yourself and our heart has no rest until it rests in You,"[98] are very well known. He sees the human person as a capacity of existence elevated to the immediate vision of God, the finite who reaches the Infinite. He writes in the De Trinitate that man "is the image of the one whom he is capable of enjoying, and whose partner he can become."[99] This faculty "is in the soul of man, which is rational or intellectual ... immortally located in his immortality," and therefore the sign of his greatness: "he is a great nature, because he is capable of enjoying the highest nature and of becoming its partner."[100] He sees the human person also as a being in need of God, because he is in need of the happiness that he can find only in God. Human nature "has been created in such an excellent state that even although it is itself mutable, it reaches happiness by cleaving to the unchangeable good, that is, to God. Nor can it satisfy its need unless it is totally happy; and only God suffices to satisfy it."[101] It is because of this basic relationship between man and God that Augustine continually exhorts men to the life of the spirit. "Go back into yourself; the truth dwells in the inner
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man; and if you discover that your nature is mutable, transcend yourself also,"[102] in order to find God, the source of the light that illuminates the mind. Together with the truth there is in the inner man the mysterious capacity to love, which is like a weight (in Augustine's celebrated metaphor)[103] that draws him out of himself, toward the others and especially toward the Other, i.e. God. The force of attraction exercised by love makes him social by his very nature,[104] so that. as Augustine writes "there is nothing so social by nature .... as the human race."[105] Man's interiority, where the inexhaustible riches of truth and love are stored, is "a great abyss,"[106] which St. Augustine never ceases to investigate with unfailing wonder. Here we must add that, for one who reflects on himself and on history, the human person appears as a great problemas Augustine says, a "great question."[107] Too many enigmas surround him: the enigma of death, of the profound division that he suffers in himself, of the incurable imbalance between what he is and what he desires. These enigmas can be synthesized in the fundamental enigma of the greatness of the human person and his incomparable wretchedness The Second Vatican Council spoke at length of these enigmas when it wished to cast light on the "mystery of the human person."[108] Augustine tackled these problems with passion and employed all the genius of his interest, not only to discover the reality, which is often very sadif it is true that no one is more social by nature than the human person, it is no less true, adds the author of the City of God, taught by history, that "no one is more prone to discord by vice than the human race"[109]but also and above all to seek and
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propose their solution. He finds only one solution, which had already appeared on the eve of his conversion: Christ, the Redeemer of man. I too have felt it necessary in my first Encyclical, called precisely Redemptor Hominis, to draw the attention of the Church's children and all of men and women of good will to this solution; I was happy to take up with my own voice the voice of all the Christian tradition. As Augustine's thought penetrates these problems, it becomes more theological, while remaining fundamentally philosophical; and the word-pair Christ and Church, which he had at first denied and later recognized in his younger years, began to illuminate the more general word-pair of God and man. 3. Christ and the Church One may rightly say that the summit of the theological thinking of the Bishop of Hippo is Christ and the Church; indeed, one could add that this is the summit of his philosophy too, in that he rebukes the philosophers for having done philosophy "without the man Christ."[110] The Church is inseparable from Christ. From the time of his conversion onwards, he recognized and accepted with joy and gratitude the law of providence which has established in Christ and in the Church "the entire summit of authority and the light of reason in that one saving name and in His one Church, recreating and reforming the human race."[111] Without doubt, he spoke profusely and sublimely of the Trinitarian mystery in his work on the Trinity and in his discourses, tracing the path that was to be taken by later
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theology. He insisted both on the equality and on the distinction of the divine Persons, illustrating these through his teaching on their relations: God "is what He has, with the exceptions that are predicated of each Person in respect of the other."[112] He developed the theology of the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and from the Son, but "principally" from the Father, because "the Father is the principle of all the divinity, or, to put it better, of the Godhead,"[113] and He has granted to the Son the spiration of the Holy Spirit,[114] who proceeds as Love and therefore is not begotten.[115] To reply better to the "garrulous rationalists,"[116] he proposed the "psychological" explanation of the Trinity, seeking its image in the memory, in the intellect and in the love of the human person, and studying thus the most august mystery of faith together with the highest nature of creation, the human spirit. Yet when he speaks of the Trinity, he never removes his gaze from Christ, who reveals the Father, nor from the work of salvation. Having come to understand the reason for the mystery of the incarnate Word, shortly before his conversion,[117] he did not cease to investigate this more deeply, summarizing his thought in formulae that are so full and effective that they are like an anticipation of the teaching of Chalcedon. In an importance passage of one of his last works, he writes: "the believer . . . believes that .in him there is the true human nature, that is our nature, although it is taken up in a unique way into the one Son of God when God the Word receives it, such that the One who received it and what He received formed one Person in the Trinity. The assumption of man did not make a quarternity, but the Trinity
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remained: this assumption wrought in an ineffable manner the truth of one person in God and man. Therefore we do not say that Christ is only God . . . nor only man . . . nor man in such a way that He would lack something that certainly belongs to human nature . . . but we say that Christ is true God, born of God the Father . . . and the same is true man, born of a human mother ... nor does His humanity, in which He is less than the Father, take away anything from His divinity, in which He is equal to the Father . . . The one Christ is both of these."[118] He puts it somewhat more briefly: "The same one who is man, is God; and the same one who is God, is mannot by the confusion of the nature but in the unity of the person,"[119] "one ... person in both natures."[120] With this solid vision of unity of the person in Christ, who is called "wholly God and wholly man,"[121] Augustine covers an immense ground in theology and history. If his eagle's eye gazes on Christ the Word. of the Father, he insists no less on Christ the man; indeed, he asserts vigorously that without Christ the man there is neither mediation, nor justification, nor resurrection, nor membership of the Church. whose head is Christ.[122] He returns often to this theme and develops it broadly, both to explain the faith which he had obtained again at the age of twenty-two and because of the needs of the Pelagian controversy. Christ, the man-God,[123] is the sole mediator between the righteous and immortal God and mortal and sinful human beings, because He is at once mortal and righteous.[124] It follows that He is the universal way, "which has never been
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lacking for the human race, no one has been set free no one is set free, no one will be set free."[125] The mediation of Christ is accomplished in the work of redemption, which consists not only in the example of righteousness, but above all in the sacrifice of reconciliation, which was supremely true,[126] supremely free,[127] and completely perfect.[128] The essential characteristic of the redemption by Christ is its universality, which shows the universality of sin. This is how Augustine repeats and interprets the words of St. Paul, "If one has died for all, then all have died" (2 Cor 5:14), i.e., dead because of sin: "The Christian faith, accordingly, exists precisely because of these two men";[129] "One and one: one for death, one for life."[130] Therefore "every man is Adam; likewise, for those who have believed, every man is Christ."[131] In Augustine's view, to deny this doctrine is the same as "emptying the cross of Christ" (1 Cor 1:17). To prevent this, he wrote and spoke much about the universality of sin, including the doctrine of original sin, "which the Catholic faith has believed from ancient times."[132] He teaches that "Jesus Christ came in the flesh for no other reason .... than to give life and salvation to all, to free, redeem, and enlighten those who beforehand were in the death of sins, in sickness, slavery, captivity, and darkness.... It follows that those who are not in need of life, salvation, liberation and redemption cannot have anything to do with this dispensation of salvation by Christ."[133] Because Christ, the only mediator and redeemer of men, is head of the Church, Christ and the Church are one single
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mystical person, the total Christ. He writes with force: "We have become Christ. Just as He is the head, we are the members; the whole man is He and ourselves."[134] This doctrine of the total Christ is one of the teachings that mattered most to the Bishop of Hippo, and one of the most fruitful themes of his ecclesiology. Another fundamental theme is that of the Holy Spirit as the soul of the mystical body: "what the soul is to the body of a man, the Holy Spirit is for the body of Christ, which is the Church."[135] The Holy Spirit is also the principle of community, by which the faithful are united to one another and to the Trinity itself. "By means of what is common to the Father and the Son, They willed that we should have communion both among ourselves and with Them. They willed to gather us together, through that gift, into that one thing which both have in common; that is, by means of God the Holy Spirit and the gift of God."[136] He therefore says in the same text: "the fellowship of unity of the Church of God, outside of which there is no remission of sins, is properly the work of the Holy Spirit, of course with the cooperation of the Father and the Son, because the Holy Spirit himself is in a certain manner the fellowship of the Father and the Son."[137] Contemplating the Church as body of Christ, given life by the Holy Spirit who is the Spirit of Christ, Augustine gave varied development to a concept which was also emphasized in a special way by the recent Council: that of the Church as communion.[138] He speaks in three different but converging ways: first, the communion of the sacraments, or
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the institutional reality founded by Christ on the foundation of the apostles.[139] He discusses this at length in the Donatist controversy, defending the unity, universality, apostolicity and sanctity of the Church,[140] and showing that she has as her center the See of Peter, "in which the primacy of the apostolic see has always been in force."[141] Second, he speaks of the communion of the saints, or the spiritual reality that unites all the righteous from Abel until the end of the ages.[142] Third, he speaks of the communion of the blessed, or the eschatological reality that gathers in all those who have attained salvation, that is, the Church "without spot and wrinkle" (Eph 5:27).[143] Another theme dear to Augustine's ecclesiology was that of the Church as mother and teacher, a theme on which he wrote profound and moving pages, because it had a close connection to his experience as convert and to his teaching as theologian. While he was on the path back to faith, he met the Church, no longer opposed to Christ as he had been made to believe,[144] but rather as the manifestation of Christ, "most true mother of Christians"[145] and authority for the revealed truth.[146] The Church is the mother who gives birth to the Christians:[147] "Two parents have given us the birth that leads to death, two parents have given us the birth that leads to life. The parents who gave us birth for death are Adam and Eve: the parents who gave us birth for life are Christ and the Church."[148] The Church is a mother who suffers on account of those who have departed from righteousness, especially those who destroy her unity;[149] she is the dove
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who moans and calls all to return or draw near to her wings;[150] she is the manifestation of God's universal fatherhood, by means of the charity which "is mild for some, severe for others; an enemy to none, but mother for all."[151] She is a mother, but also, like Mary, a virgin: mother by the ardor of charity, virgin by the integrity of the faith that she guards, defends and teaches.[152] This virginal motherhood is linked to her task of teacher, a task which the Church carries out in obedience to Christ. For this reason, Augustine looks to the Church as guarantor of the Scriptures,[153] and attests that he will remain secure in her whatever difficulties arise for him,[154] urgently exhorting others to do the same: "Thus, as I have often said and impress upon you with vehemence, whatever we are, you are secure if you have God as your Father and His Church as your mother."[155] From this firm conviction then is born his passionate exhortation that one should love God and the ChurchGod as Father and the Church as Mother.[156] Perhaps no one else has spoken of the Church with such great affection and passion as Augustine. I have pointed out a few of his statements, in the hope that these are sufficient to show the depth and the beauty of a teaching that will never be studied sufficiently, especially from the point of view of the love that animates the Church as the effect of the Holy Spirit's presence within her. He writes, "We have the Holy Spirit if we love the Church: we love the Church if we remain in her unity and charity."[157] 4. Freedom and grace Even to indicate briefly the various aspects of St. Augustine's
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theology would be an infinite task. Another important, indeed fundamental aspect, linked also to his conversion, is that of freedom and grace. As I have already mentioned, it was on the eve of his conversion that he grasped the responsibility of the human person in his actions, and the necessity of the grace of the sole Mediator,[158] whose power he felt in the moment of the final decision, as the eighth Book of his Confessions eloquently testifies.[159] His personal reflections and the controversies he later experienced, particularly with the followers of the Manichaeans and the Pelagians, offered him the opportunity to study more deeply the individual facets of this problem and to propose a synthesis, although this was done with great modesty because of the highly mysterious nature of the problem. He always defended freedom as one of the bases of a Christian anthropology, against his former coreligionists,[160] against the determinism of the astrologers whose victim he himself had once been,[161] and against every form of fatalism;[162] he explained that liberty and foreknowledge are not incompatible,[163] nor liberty and the aid of divine grace. "The fact that free will is aided, does not destroy it; but because it is not taken away, it is aided."[164] And the Augustinian principle is well known: "He who made you without your participation, does not justify you without your participation. He has made you without your knowledge; He justifies you if you will it."[165] With a long series of biblical texts, he demonstrates to those who doubted this compatibility, or upheld the contrary view, that freedom and grace belong to divine revelation and that
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one must hold firmly to both of these truths.[166] Few are capable of grasping this compatibility in its profundity, for this is an exceedingly difficult question[167] which can cause many people anxiety,[168] because while defending liberty one can give the impression of denying grace, and vice versa.[169] One must therefore believe in their compatibility just as one must believe in the compatibility of the two entirely necessary offices of Christ, who is at once savior aid judge, for it is on these two offices that freedom and grace depend: "If then God's grace does not exist, how does He save the world? And if free will does not exist, how does He judge the world?"[170] On the other hand, Augustine insists on the necessity of grace, which is the same thing as the necessity of prayer. To those who said that God does not command what is impossible, and that therefore grace is not necessary, he replied that "God does not command what is impossible; but when He commands, He exhorts you to do what you can and to ask for what you cannot do,"[171] and God gives help so that the command becomes possible, since "He does not abandon us unless we abandon Him first."[172] The doctrine of the necessity of divine grace becomes the doctrine of the necessity of prayer, on which Augustine insists so much,[173] because, as he writes, "it is certain that God has prepared some gifts even for those who do not pray, such as the beginning of faith; but other gifts only for those who pray, such as final perseverance."[174] Grace is therefore necessary to remove the obstacles that prevent the will from fleeing evil and accomplishing what is
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good. These obstacles are two in number, "ignorance and weakness,"[175] but especially the latter because "although it begins to be clear what is to be done and what goal is to be striven for . . . one does not act, one does not carry it out, one does not live well."[176] Augustine calls this helping grace "the inspiration of love so that we may carry out in holy love what we have recognized . . . must be done.[177] The two obstacles of ignorance and weakness must be overcome if we are to breathe the air of freedom. It will not be superfluous to recall that the defense of the necessity of grace is, for Augustine, the defense of Christian freedom. Starting from Christ's words, "If the Son sets you free, then you will be truly free" (Jn 8:36), he defends and proclaims this freedom which is inseparable from truth and love. Truth, love and freedom are the three great good things that fired the spirit of Augustine and exercised his genius; he shed much light on the understanding of these. To pause briefly in consideration of this last good, that of freedom, we must observe that he describes and celebrates Christian freedom in all its forms, from the freedom from errorfor the liberty of error is "the worst death of the soul"[178]through the gift of faith which subjects the soul to the truth,[179] to the final and inalienable freedom, the greatest of all, which consists in the inability to die and in the inability to sin, i.e. in immortality and the fullness of righteousness.[180] All other freedoms which Augustine illustrates and proclaims find their place among these two, which mark the beginning and the end of salvation: the freedom from the dominion of the disordered passions, as the
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work of the grace that enlightens the intellect and gives the will so much strength that it becomes victorious in the combat with evil (as he himself experienced in his conversion when he was freed from the harsh slavery); (181) the freedom from time that we devour and that devours us,[182] in that love permits us to live anchored to eternity.[183] He sets forth the unutterable riches of justificationthe divine life of grace,[184] the indwelling of the Holy Spirit,[185] and "deification"[186]and makes an important distinction between the remission of sins which is total, full and perfect on the one hand, and on the other hand the interior renewal which is progressive and will be full and total only after the resurrection, when the human person as a whole shares in the divine immutability.[187] In the case of the grace that strengthens the will, he insists that it operates by means of love and therefore makes the will invincible against evil, without removing from the will the possibility of refusal. Commenting on the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John, "No one comes to me unless the Father draws him" (Jn 6:44), he writes, "Do not think that you are drawn against your will: the spirit is drawn also by love."[188] But love, as he also observes, works "with liberal sweetness,"[189] so that "the one who observes the precept with love, observes it in freedom.[190] "The law of freedom is the law of love."[191] Augustine teaches no less insistently freedom from time, a freedom that Christ, the eternal Word, has come to bring us by his entry into the world in the incarnation: "O Word that exists before time, through whom time was made," he
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exclaims, "born in time although You are eternal life, calling those who exist in time and making them eternal!"[192] It is well known that St. Augustine studied deeply the mystery of time[193] and both felt and stated the need to transcend time in order to exist truly. "That you may be truly yourself, transcend time. But who shall transcend it by his own power? Let Christ lift him up, as He said to the Father: 'I wish that they too may be with me where I am.'"[194] Christian freedom, as I have briefly mentioned, is seen and meditated on in the Church, the city of God, which manifests the fruits of this freedom and, as far as is in her power, makes all people sharers in them, upheld by divine grace. For she is founded on the "social love that embraces all people and wishes to unite them in one justice and peace, unlike the city of the wicked, which divides and sets people against one another because it is founded on "private" love.[195] It is good to mention here some of the definitions of peace which Augustine made according to the various contexts in which he was speaking. Starting from the idea that "the peace of mankind is ordered harmony," he defines other kinds of peace, such as "the peace of the home, the ordered harmony of those who live together, in giving orders and in obeying them," likewise the peace of the earthly city and "the peace of the heavenly city, the wholly ordered and harmonious fellowship in enjoying God and enjoying one another in God," then "the universal peace that is the tranquility of good order," and finally the order itself that is "the disposition that gives its place to each of the various equal and unequal things."[196]
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"The pilgrimage of Your people sighs" for this peace "from its departure until its return,"[197] and for this peace it works. 5. Charity and the ascent of the spirit This brief synthesis of Augustine's teaching would remain seriously incomplete, if we did not mention his spiritual teaching, which, united closely to his philosophical and theological teaching, is no less rich than these. We must return once more to conversion, with which we began. It was then that he decided to dedicate himself totally to the ideal of Christian perfection. He remained always faithful to this ideal; even more than this, he committed himself with all his power to showing others the path of perfection, drawing both on his own experience and on the Bible, which is for all the first nourishment of piety. He was a man of prayer; one might indeed say, a man made of prayerit suffices to recall the famous Confessions which he wrote in the form of a letter to Godand he repeated to all, with incredible persistence, the necessity of prayer: "God has willed that our struggle should be with prayers rather than with our own strength",[198] he describes the nature of prayer, which is so simple and yet so complex,[199] the interiority which permits him to identify prayer with desire: "Your desire is itself your prayer; and if your desire is continuous, then your prayer too is continuous."[200] He brings out its social usefulness also: "Let us pray for those who have not been called, that they may be called. For perhaps God has predestined them in such a way that they will be granted and receive the same grace in answer to our
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prayers";[201] and he speaks of its wholly necessary link to Christ "who prays for us, and prays in us, and is prayed to by us. He prays for us as our priest; He prays in us, as our head; He is prayed to by us, as our God. Let us therefore recognize our voices in him, and his voice in us."[202] He climbed with steady diligence the steps of the interior ascents, and described their program for all, an ample and well-defined program that comprises the movement of the spirit toward contemplationpurification, constancy and serenity, orientation toward the light, dwelling in the light[203]the stages of charityincipient, progressing, intense, perfect[204]the gifts of the Holy Spirit that are linked to the beatitudes,[205] the petitions of the Lord's Prayer,[206] the examples given by Christ himself.[207] If the Gospel beatitudes constitute the supernatural environment in which the Christian must live, the gifts of the Holy Spirit bring the supernatural touch of grace which makes this climate possible; the petitions of the Lord's Prayer, or in general, prayer which can be narrowed down to these petitions, gives the necessary nourishment; the example of Christ provides the model that is to be imitated; and charity is the soul of all, the source of radiation outwards and the secret power of the spiritual life. It is no small merit of Augustine to have narrowed all of Christian doctrine and life down to the question of charity. "This is true love: that we cling to the truth and live righteously."[208] We are led to this by Sacred Scripture, which in its entirety "tells the story of Christ and admonishes us to charity,"[209] and also by theology, which finds its own goal in
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charity,[210] by philosophy,[211] by pedagogy,[212] and finally by the study of politics.[213] Augustine located the essence and the norm of Christian perfection in charity,[214] because it is the first gift of the Holy Spirit[215] and the reality which prevents one from being wicked.[216] It is the good with which one possesses all goods, and without which the other goods are of no avail. "Have charity, and you will have them all; because without charity, whatever you have will be of no benefit."[217] He indicated all the inexhaustible riches of charity; it makes easy whatever is difficult,[218] gives newness to what has become a habit;[219] it gives irresistible force to the movement toward the supreme Good, because charity is always imperfect here on earth;[220] it frees from every interest that is not God;[221] it is inseparable from humility"where there is humility, there is charity"[222] and is the essence of every virtue, since virtue is nothing else but well-ordered love;[223] it is the gift of God. This final point is crucial, because it separates and distinguishes the naturalistic and the Christian concepts of life. "Whence comes the love of God and of neighbor that exists in men, if not from God himself? Because if it is not from God, but from men, the Pelagians have won: but if it is from God, then we have defeated the Pelagians."[224] Charity gave birth in Augustine to the anxious desire to contemplate divine things, a desire that belongs to wisdom.[225] He frequently experienced the highest forms of contemplation, not only in his famous experience at
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Ostia,[226] but in other forms too. He says of himself, "I often do this," referring to his recourse to the meditation of Scripture so that his pressing cares may not oppress him: "This is my delight, and I take refuge in this pleasure as much as the things I must do permit me to relax.... Sometimes You lead me into an interior sentiment that is utterly unusual, to a sweetness I cannot describe: if this were to reach its perfection in me, I cannot say what that would be, but it would not be this life."[227] When these experiences are united to the theological and psychological acuteness of Augustine, and to his uncommon talent as a writer, we understand how he was able to describe the mystical ascents with such precision, so that he has been called by many people the prince of mystics. Despite his predominating love for contemplation, Augustine accepted the burden of the episcopate and taught others to do likewise, responding thus with humility to the call of our mother the Church.[228] But he also taught through his example and his writings how to preserve the taste for prayer and contemplation among the tasks of pastoral activity. It is worth while to recall the synthesis that he offers us in the City of God, which has become classical. "The love of the truth seeks the holy repose of leisure, but the necessity of love takes on the just duty. If no one imposes this burden, one should spend one's time in perceiving and grasping the truth: but in this case, the delight in the truth must not be altogether abandoned, lest the sweetness be lost, and necessity become oppressive."[229] The profound teaching set out here merits a long and careful reflection, which
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becomes more easy and fruitful if we look to Augustine himself, who gave a shining example of the way to reconcile both aspects of the Christian life, prayer and action, which are apparently contradictory.

III It is not irrelevant to recall the pastoral activity of this bishop, who is universally acknowledged as one of the greatest pastors of the Church. This activity also had its origin in his conversion, because the conversion gave birth to his resolve to serve God alone. "Now I love You alone.... I am ready to serve You alone."[230] When he then realized that this service must also include pastoral activity, he did not hesitate to accept it; he accepted it with humility and trepidation, but out of obedience to God and to the Church.[231] This apostolate had three fields which spread out like concentric circles: the local church of Hippo, which was not large, but was troubled and needy; the African Church, which was sadly divided between Catholics and Donatists; and the universal Church, which was attacked by paganism and Manichaeism, and disturbed by heretical movements. He saw himself as the servant of the Church in every way: "Christ's servant, and through him the servant of his servants."[232] He drew all the consequences of this, including the most taxing, such as risking his own life for the faithful:[233] he asked the Lord for the strength to love them in such a way as to be ready to die for them "in reality or in disposition."[234] He was convinced that one who was
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placed at the head of the people without this disposition was "a scarecrow standing in the vineyard"[235] rather than a bishop. He did not want to be safe without his faithful,[236] and he was ready for any sacrifice, if it would bring those in error back to the way of truth.[237] At a time of extreme danger because of the invasion by the Vandals, he taught his priests to stay among their faithful even at the risk of their own lives.[238] In other words, he wished that bishops and priests should serve the faithful as Christ served them. "Let us therefore see in what sense the bishop who is set over others is a servant: in the same way as the Lord himself."[239] This was his constant program of action. In his diocese, which he never left except in a case of necessity,[240] he was assiduous in preachinghe preached on Saturday and Sunday, and frequently throughout the entire week[241]in catechesis;[242] in what he called "the bishop's audience," which sometimes lasted for an entire day, so that he did not eat;[243] for the care of the poor;[244] in the formation of the clergy;[245] in directing the monks, many of whom were later called to the priesthood and the episcopate,[246] and in the guidance of the monasteries of nuns.[247] When he died, "he left the Church a very numerous clergy, and monasteries of men and women full of those consecrated to chastity under their superiors, and libraries."[248] He worked with equal tirelessness for the Church in Africa, accepting the task of preaching whenever he was asked.[249] He took part in the frequent regional councils, despite the difficulties of travel, and undertook with intelligence,
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assiduity and passion the work of terminating the Donatist schism which divided that Church into two parties. He strove hard to achieve this success, which was his great merit. He recorded the history of the doctrine of Donatism in innumerable writings, explaining the Catholic doctrine of the sacraments and of the Church; he promoted an ecumenical conference between Catholic and Donatist bishops, and he animated it by his presence. He proposed the removal of all obstacles to reunification, including that of the renunciation of the episcopate by the Donatist bishops,[250] and obtained this. He published the conclusions of this conference,[251] and brought the process of pacification to full success.[252] When persecutors sought his death, he once escaped from the hands of the Donatist circumcelliones because their guide took the wrong way.[253] He composed very many works and wrote many letters for the universal Church, entering into many controversies. The Manichaeans, the Pelagians, the Arians and the pagans were the object of his pastoral concern in the defense of the Catholic faith. He worked untiringly by day and by night.[254] Even in the last years of his life, he would dictate one work by night and another, when he was free, by day.[255] When he died at the age of seventy-six, he left three works unfinished: these three works are the most eloquent testimony to his sleepless diligence and to his unconquerable love for the Church.

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IV Before concluding, let us ask this extraordinary man what he has to say to the modern man. I believe that he has indeed much to say, both by his example and by his teaching. He teaches the person who searches for truth not to despair of finding it. He teaches this by his examplehe himself rediscovered it after many years of laborious seekingand by means of his literary activity, the program of which he had fixed in the first letter after his conversion. "It seems to me that one must bring men back . . . to the hope of finding the truth."[256] He teaches therefore that one must seek the truth "with piety, chastity and diligence,"[257] in order to overcome doubts about the possibility of returning into oneself, to the interior realm where truth dwells;[258] and likewise to overcome the materialism which prevents the mind from grasping its indissoluble union with the realities that are understood by the intelligence,[259] and the rationalism that refuses to collaborate with faith and prevents the mind from understanding the "mystery" of the human person.[260] Augustine's legacy to the theologians, whose meritorious task is to study more deeply the contents of the faith, is the immense patrimony of his thought, which is as a whole valid even now; above all, his legacy is the theological method to which he remained absolutely faithful. We know that this method implied full adherence to the authority of the faith, which is one of its originthe authority of Christ[261]and is revealed through Scripture, Tradition and the Church. His legacy includes the ardent desire to understand his own
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faith"Be a great lover indeed of understanding,"[262] is his command to others, which he applies to himself also;[263] likewise the profound sense of the mystery"for it is better," he exclaims, "to have a faithful ignorance than a presumptuous knowledge";[264] and likewise the sure conviction that the Christian doctrine comes from God and thus has its own original source, which must not only be preserved in its integritythis is the "virginity" of the faith, of which he spokebut must also serve as a measure to judge the philosophies that conform to it or diverge from it.[265] It is well known how much Augustine loved Sacred Scripture, proclaiming its divine origin,[266] its inerrancy,[267] its depth and inexhaustible riches;[268] and it is well known how much he studied Scripture. But the aim of his own study, and of his promotion of study by others, is the entirety of Scripture, so that the true thought, or as he says, the "heart"[269] of Scripture may be indicated, harmonizing it where necessary with itself.[270] He takes these two principles to be fundamental for the understanding of Scripture. For this reason he reads it in the Church, taking account of the Tradition, the nature[271] and obligatory force of which he forcefully underlines.[272] He made the celebrated statement: "I should not believe the Gospel unless I were moved to do so by the authority of the Catholic Church."[273] In the controversies that arose concerning the interpretation of Sacred Scripture, his recommendation was that one should discuss "with holy humility, with Catholic peace, with Christian charity,"[274] until the truth itself be grasped,
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which God "has set ... upon the throne of unity."[275] One will then be able to see that the controversy had not broken out in vain, because it "was the occasion for learning"[276] and progress has been made in the understanding of the faith. Another contribution of Augustine's teaching to the men and women of today which we may briefly mention is his proposal of the twofold object of study that should occupy the human mind: God and man "What do you wish to know?" he asks himself. And he replies: "God and the soul are what I wish to know." Nothing more? Nothing at all.[277] Confronted with the sad spectacle of evil he reminds modern men and women that they must nevertheless have confidence in the final triumph of the good, i.e., of the City "where the victory is the truth; where dignity is holiness; where peace is happiness where life is eternity."[278] Further, he teaches scientists to recognize the signs of God in the things that have been created[279] and to discover the "seeds" which God has sown in the harmony of the universe[280] He recommends above all to those who have control over the destinies of the peoples that they love peace,[281] and that they promote it, not through conflict, but with the methods of peace, because, as he wisely writes, "there is more glory in killing the wars themselves with a word than in killing men with the sword, and there is more glory in achieving or maintaining peace by means of peace than by means of war."[282] Finally, I should like to address the young people whom
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Augustine greatly loved as a professor before his conversion[283] and as a pastor afterwards.[284] He recalls three great things to them: truth, love and freedomthree supreme goods which stand together. He also invites them to love beauty, for he himself was a great lover of beauty.[285] It is not only the beauty of bodies, which could make one forget the beauty of the spirit,[286] nor only the beauty of art,[287] but the interior beauty of virtue[288] and especially the eternal beauty of God, from which is derived the beauty of bodies, of art and of virtue. Augustine calls God "the beauty of all beauties."[289] "in whom and from whom and through whom exist as good and beautiful everything that is good and beautiful."[290] When he looked back on the years before his conversion, he regretted bitterly that he had been late in loving this "beauty, ever ancient, ever new";[291] he admonished the young not to imitate him in this, but to love beauty itself always and above all else, and to preserve to the end the interior glory of their youth in beauty.[292]

V I have recalled the conversion of St. Augustine and have sketched briefly a panorama of the thought of an incomparable man whose children and disciples we all are in a certain fashion, both in the Church and in the western world itself. I express once again my fervent desire that his teaching should be studied and widely known, and his pastoral zeal be imitated, so that the authoritative teaching of such a great doctor and pastor may flourish ever more happily in the
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Church and in the world, for the progress of the faith and of culture. The sixteenth centenary of the conversion of St. Augustine offers a highly favorable opportunity to increase the study of St. Augustine and to spread devotion to him. I exhort in particular the religious orders, male and female, which rejoice to bear his name, live under his patronage and follow his Rule in whatever way, to dedicate themselves to this task, so that this may be for them the occasion to follow St. Augustine's example of wisdom and holiness, and to spread this zealously to others. I shall be present in spirit, with gratitude and best wishes, at the various initiatives that celebrate this centenary, invoking on each of them with all my heart the heavenly protection and the efficacious help of the Virgin Mary, whom the Bishop of Hippo proclaimed as Mother of the Church.[293] As a pledge of grace I am happy to impart my Apostolic Blessing with this Letter. Given at Rome, at St. Peter's on August 28, on the feast day of St. Augustine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church, in the year 1986, the eighth of my Pontificate.

ENDNOTES 1 Celestine I, Apostolivi verba (May 431): PL 50, 530 A. 2 Cf. Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris (August 4, 1879): Acta Leonis
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III, I, Rome 1881, p. 270. 3 Cf. Pius XI, Ad salutem human generis (April 22, 1930): AAS 22 (1930), p. 233. 4 Paul VI, Discourse to the Religious of the Augustinian Order (May 4, 1970): AAS 62 (1970), p. 426; cf. LOsservatore Romano, English edition, May 21, 1970. 5 John Paul II, Discourse to the Professors and students of the "Augustinianum" (May 8, 1982):AAS 74 (1982), p. 800; cf. LOsservatore Romano, English edition, June 14, 1982. 6 John Paul II, Discourse to the General Chapter of the Augustinian Order on August 25, 1983: Insegnamenti VI-2 (1983), p. 305; cf. LOsservatore Romano, English edition, September 3, 1983. 7 Cf. St. Augustine, Serm. 93, 4; 213, 7: PL 38, 1063. (Henceforth, all references not expressly naming the author are to be understood as "St. Augustine"). 8 Cf. De beata vita 4: PL 32,961, Contra Acad. 2, 2, 4-6, PL 32, 921-922, Solil. 1, 1, 1-6, PL 32, 869-872. 9 De dono perseu. 20, 53: PL 45, 1026. 10 Confess. 1, 11, 17: PL 32, 699. 11 Cf. Confess. 9, 8, 17-9, 13, 17: PL 32, 771-780. 12 Cf. Confess. 6 5,8: PL 32,723. 13 Confess. 3, 4, 8: PL 32, 686; ibid. 5, 14, 25: PL 32, 718.
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14 Contra Acad. 2,2,5: PL 32,921. 15 Confess. 3,4,7: PL 32,685. 16 Confess. 3, 6, 10: PL 32, 687. 17 De beata vita 4: PL 32, 961. 18 Serm. 51, 5, 6: PL 38, 336. 19 De ultitate cred. 1, 2: PL 42, 66. 20 Ibid. 21 Cf. Confess. 5, 3, 3: PL 32,707. 22 Cf. Confess. 5, 10, 19; 5, 13, 23; 5, 14, 24: PL 32, 715, 717, 718. 23 De beata vita 4: PL 32, 961; Cf. Confess. 5, 9, 19; 5, 14, 25; 6, 1, 1: PL 32, 715, 718, 719. 24 Cf. De ultitate credendi 8, 20: PL 42, 78-79. 25 Confess. 6, 11, 18: PL 32. 719. 26 Cf. Confess. 3, 12, 21: PL 32, 694. 27 Cf. Contra Acad. 3, 20, 43: PL 32, 957; Confess. 6, 5, 7: PL 32, 722-723. 28 De ordine 2, 9, 26: PL 32, 1007. 29 Cf. Confess. 7, 19, 25: PL 32, 746. 30 Cf. Confess. 6, 5, 7; 6, 11, 19; 7, 7, 11: PL 32, 723, 729,
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739. 31 Cf. Confess. 7, 7, 11: PL 32, 739. 32 Confess. 7, 10, 16: PL 32, 742. 33 Cf. Confess. 7, 1, 1; 7, 7, 11: PL 32, 733, 739. 34 Cf. Confess. 7, 5, 7: PL 32, 736. 35 Confess. 7, 13, 19: PL 32, 743. 36 Cf. Confess. 7, 12, 18: PL 32, 743. 37 Cf. Confess. 7, 3, 5: PL 32, 735. 38 Confess. 8, 10, 22: PL 32, 759; Cf. Ibid. 8, 5, 10-11: PL 32, 753-754. 39 Cf. Confess. 7, 17, 23: PL 32, 744-745. 40 Cf. Confess. 7, 21, 26: PL 32, 749. 41 Confess. 7, 21, 27: PL 32, 747. 42 Contra Acad. 2, 2, 6: PL 32, 922. 43 Cf. Confess. 7, 21, 27: PL 32, 748. 44 Confess. 1, 11, 17: PL 32, 669. 45 Cf. Confess. 6, 11, 18; 8, 7, 17: PL 32, 729, 757. 46 Cf. Confess. 8, 5, 11, 12: PL 32, 754

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47 Cf. Confess. 6, 12, 21: PL 32, 730. 48 Cf. Confess. 6, 6, 9: PL 32, 723. 49 Cf. Confess. 6, 15, 25: PL 32, 732. 50 Cf. Confess. 8, 1, 2: PL 32, 749. 51 Cf. Confess. 8, 6, 13-15: PL 32, 755-756. 52 Confess. 8, 11, 27: PL 32, 761. 53 Cf. Confess. 8, 7, 16-12, 29: PL 32, 756-762. 54 Confess 8, 12, 30: PL 32, 762. 55 Confess. 9, 2, 24; PL 32, 763. 56 Cf. Confess. 9, 4, 7-12: PL 32, 766-769. 57 Cf. Confess. 9, 5, 13: PL 32, 769. 58 Confess. 9, 6, 14: PL 32, 769. 59 Cf. Confess. 9, 6, 14: PL 32, 769. 60 Cf. Confess. 9, 12, 28s: PL 32, 775s. 61 Cf. De mor. Eccl. cath. 1, 33, 70: PL 32, 1340. 62 POSSIDIO, Vita S. Augustini 3, 1: PL 32, 36 63 Cf. Serm. 355, 2: PL 39, 1569. 64 Cf. POSSIDIO, Vita S. Augustini 11, 2: PL 32, 42.

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65 Cf. L. VERHEIJEN, La regle de Saint Augustin, Paris 1967, I-II. 66 Confess. 9, 2, 3: PL 32, 764; cf. ibid. 10, 6, 8: PL 32, 782. 67 Tractatus in Io 26, 5: PL 35, 1609. 68 De Trin. 1, 5, 8: PL 42, 825. 69 Contra Acad. 3, 20, 43: PL 32, 957. 70 Cf. De ordine 2, 9, 26: PL 32, 1007. 71 Cf. Serm. 43, 9: PL 38, 258. 72 Cf. De ultitate credendi PL 42, 65-92. 73 Cf. Confess. 6, 4, 6: PL 32, 722: De serm Domini in monte 2, 3, 14: PL 34, 1275. 74 Cf. Ep. 118, 5, 32: PL 33, 447. 75 Cf. Serm. 51, 5, 6: PL 387, 337. 76 Cf. De quantitate animae 7, 12: PL 32, 1041-1042. 77 De uera relig. 24, 45: PL 34, 1041-1042. 78 Ep. 120, 2, 8: PL 33, 456. 79 De praed. sanctorum 2, 5: PL 44, 962-963. 80 Contra ep. Man. 4, 5: PL 42, 175. 81 Cf. Eg. De civ. Dei 2, 29, 1-2: PL 41, 77-78.
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82 De civ. Dei 19, 17: PL 41, 645 83 Cf. Solil. 1, 2, 7: PL 32, 872. 84 Confess. 1, 5, 5: PL 32, 663. 85 Serm. 117, 5: PL 38, 673. 86 Ep. 120.3.15: PL 33, 459. 87 De Trin. 5, 1, 2: PL 42. 912; cf. Confess. 4, 16, 28: PL 32; 704. 88 De civ. Dei 8, 4: PL 41, 228. 89 De civ. Dei 8, 10, 2: PL 41, 235. 90 Confess. 9, 4, 10: PL 32, 768. 91 Cf. Confess. 1, 4, 4: PL 32, 662. 92 Ep. 187, 4, 14: PL 33, 837. 93 Cf. De magistro 11, 38-14, 46: PL 32, 1215-1220. 94 Cf. Confess. 13, 9, 10 PL 32, 848-849. 95 Confess. 3, 6, 11: PL 32, 687-688. 96 Confess. 10, 27, 38: PL 32, 795. 97 Confess. 5, 2, 2: PL 32, 707. 98 Confess 1, 1, 1: PL 32, 661.

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99 De Trin. 14, 8, 11: PL 12, 1044. 100 De Trin. 14, 4, 6: PL 42, 1040. 101 De civ. Dei 12, 1, 3: PL 41, 349. 102 De uera relig. 39, 72: PL 34, 154. 103 Cf. Confess 13, 9, 10: PL 32, 848-849. 104 Cf. De bono coniugali 1, 1: PL 40, 373. 105 De civ. Dei 12, 27: PL 41, 376. 106 Confess. 4, 14, 22: PL 32, 702, 107 Confess. 4. 4. 9: PL 32, 697. 108 Vatican Council II, Gaudium et Spes. n. 10, cf. nn. 1218. 109 De civ. Dei 12, 27: PL 41, 376. 110 De Trin. 13, 19, 24: PL 42, 1034. 111 Ep. 118, 5, 33: PL 33, 448. 112 De civ. Dei 11, 10, 1: PL 41, 325. 113 De Trin. 4, 20, 29: PL 42, 908. 114 Cf. De Trin. 15, 17, 29: PL 42, 1081. 115 Cf. De Trin. 15, 27. 50: PL 42, 1097; ibid. 1, 5, 8: PL 42, 824-825; 9, 12, 18: PL 42, 970-971.
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116 De Trin. 1, 2, 4: PL 42, 822. 117 Cf. Confess. 7, 19, 25: PL 32, 746. 118 De dono persev. 24, 67: PL 45, 1033-1034. 119 Serm. 186, 1, 1: 38, 999. 120 Serm. 294.9: PL 38, 1340. 121 Serm. 293, 7: PL 38, 1332. 122 Cf. Tractatus in Io 66, 2: PL 35, 1810-1811. 123 Cf. Serm. 47, 12-20: PL 38, 308-312. 124 Cf. Confess. 10, 42, 68: PL 32, 808. 125 De civ. Dei 10, 32, 2: PL 41, 315. 126 De Trin. 4:13, 17; PL 42, 899. 127 De Trin. 4, 13, 16: PL 42, 898. 128 De Trin. 4, 14, 19: 42, 901. 129 De gratia Christi et de pecc. orig. 2, 24, 28: PL 44, 398. 130 Serm. 151, 5: PL 38, 817. 131 Enarr. in Ps. 70, d. 2, 1: PL 36, 891. 132 De nupt et concup. 2, 12, 25: PL 44, 450-451. 133 De pedd. mer. et rem. 1, 26, 39: PL 44, 131.

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134 Tractatus in Io 21, 8: PL 35, 1568. 135 Serm. 267, 4: PL 38, 1231. 136 Serm. 71, 12, 18: PL 38, 454. 137 Serm. 71, 20, 33: PL 38, 463-464. 138 Cf. Vatican Council II, Lumen Gentium, nn. 13-14: 21. etc. 139 Cf. De civ. Dei 1, 35; 18, 50: PL 41, 46; 612. 140 Cf. Eg. De unitate Ecclesiae: PL 43, 391-446. 141 Ep. 43, 7: PL 33, 163. 142 Cf. De civ. Dei 18, 51: PL 41, 613 143 Cf. Retract. 2, 18: PL 32, 637. 144 Cf. Confess. 6, 11, 18: PL 32 728-729. 145 De mor. Eccl. cath. 1, 30, 62: PL 32, 1336. 146 Cf. Confess. 7, 7, 11: PL 32, 739. 147 Cf. Ep. 48, 2: PL 33, 188. 148 Serm. 22, 10: PL 38, 154. 149 Cf. e.g. Psalmus contra partem Donati, epilogus: PL 43,31-32. 150 Cf. Tractatus in lo 6, 15: PL 35, 1432.
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151 De catech. rud. 15, 23: PL 40,328. 152 Cf. Serm. 188, 4: PL 38, 1004. 153 Cf. Confess. 7, 7, 11: PL 32, 759. 154 Cf. De bapt. 3, 2, 2: PL 43, 139-140. 155 Contra litt. Petil. 3, 9, 10: PL 43, 353. 156 Cf. Enarr. in Ps. 88, d. 2, 14: PL 37, 1140. 157 Tractatus in Io 32, 8: PL 35, 1646. 158 Cf. Confess 8, 10, 22; 7, 18, 24: PL 32, 759-745. 159 Cf. e.g. Confess. 8, 9, 21; 8, 12, 29: PL 32, 758-759; 762. 160 Cf. De libero arb. 3, 1, 3: PL 32, 1272; De duabus animabus 10, 14: PL 42, 104-105. 161 Cf. Confess. 4, 3, 4: PL 32, 694-695. 162 Cf. De civ. Dei 5, 8: PL 41, 48. 163 Cf. De libero arb. 3, 4, 10-11: PL 32, 1276; De civ. Dei 5, 9, 1-4: PL 148-152. 164 Ep. 157, 2, 10: PL 33, 677. 165 Serm. 169, 11, 13: PL 38, 923. 166 Cf. De gratia et lib. arb. 2, 2-11, 23: PL 44, 882-895. 167 Cf. Ep. 214, 6: PL 33, 970.
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168 Cf. De pedd. mer. et rem. 2, 18, 28: PL 44, 124-125. 169 Cf. De gratia Christi et de pecc. orig. 47, 52: PL 44, 383-384. 170 Ep. 214. 2: PL 33, 969. 171 De natura et gratia 43, 50: PL 44, 271, Cf. Conc. Trid., D-S 172 De natura et gratia 26, 29: PL 44, 261. 173 Cf. Ep. 130: PL 33, 494-507. 174 De dono persev. 16, 39: PL 45, 1017. 175 De pedd. mer. et rem. 2 17, 26: PL 44, 167. 176 De spiritu et littera 3, 5: PL 44, 203. 177 Contra duas epp. Pel. 4, 5, 11: PL 44, 617. 178 Ep. 105, 2, 10: PL 33, 400. 179 Cf. De libero arb. 2, 13, 37: PL 32, 1261. 180 De corrept. et gratia 12, 33: PL 44, 936. 181 Cf. Confess. 8, 5, 10; 8, 9, 21: PL 32, 753; 758-759. 182 Cf. Confess. 9, 4, 10: PL 32, 768. 183 Cf. De vera relig. 10, 19: PL 34, 131. 184 Cf. Ennar, in Ps. 70, d. 2, 3: PL 36, 893.
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185 Cf. Ep. 187: PL 33, 832-848. 186 Ennar, in Ps. 49, 2: PL 36, 565. 187 Cf. De pedd. mer. et rem. 2, 7, 9: PL 44, 156157; Serm. 166, 4: PL 38, 909. 188 Tractatus in Io 26, 25: PL 35, 1607-1609. 189 Contra Iulianum 3, 112: PL 45, 1296. 190 De gratia Christi et de pecc. orig. 1, 13, 14: PL 44, 368. 191 Ep. 167, 6, 19: PL 33, 740. 192 Enarr. in Ps. 101, d. 2, 10: PL 37, 1311-1312. 193 Cf. Confess. lib. 11: PL 32, 809-826. 194 Tractatus in Io 38, 10: PL 35, 1680. 195 De Gen. ad litt. 11, 15, 20: PL 34, 437. 196 De civ. Dei 19, 13: PL 41, 840. 197 Confess. 9, 13, 37: PL 32, 780. 198 Contra Iulianum 6, 15: PL 45, 1535. 199 Cf. De serm. Domini in Monte 2, 5, 14: PL 34, 1236. 200 Enarr. in Ps. 37, 14: PL 36, 404. 201 De dono persev. 22, 60: PL 45, 1029.

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202 Enarr. in Ps. 85, 1: PL 37, 1081. 203 Cf. De quantitate animae 33, 73-76: PL 32, 1075-1077. 204 Cf. De natura et gratia 70, 84: PL 44, 290.> 205 Cf. De serm. Domini in Monte 1, 1, 3-4: PL 34, 12311232; De doctr. Christ. 2, 7, 9-11: PL 34, 39-40. 206 Cf. De serm. Domini in Monte 2, 11, 38: PL 34, 1286 207 Cf. De sancta virginitate 28, 28: PL 40, 411. 208 De Trin. 8, 7, 10: PL 42, 956. 209 De catech. rudibus 4, 8: PL 40, 315. 210 Cf. De Trin. 14, 10, 13: PL 42, 1047. 211 Cf. Ep. 137, 5, 17: PL 38, 524. 212 Cf. De catech. rudibus 12, 17: PL 40, 323. 213 Cf. Ep. 137, 5, 17; 138, 2, 15: PL 38, 524; 531-532. 214 Cf. De natura et gratia 70, 84: PL 44, 290. 215 Cf. Tractatus in Io 87, 1 : PL 35, 1852. 216 Cf. Tractatus in Ep. Io 7, 8; 10, 7: PL 35, 1441; 14701471. 217 Tractatus in Io 32,8: PL 35, 1646. 218 Cf. De bono viduitatis 21, 26: PL 40, 447.
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219 Cf. De catech. rudibus 12, 17: PL 40, 323. 220 Cf. Serm. 169, 18: PL 38, 926; De perf. iust. hom.: PL 44, 291 318. 221 Cf. Enarr. in Ps. 53, 10: PL 36, 666-667. 222 Tractatus in Ep. Io, prol.: PL 35, 1977. 223 Cf. De civ. Dei 15, 22: PL 41, 467. 224 De gratia et lib. arb. 18, 37: PL 44, 903-904. 225 Cf. De Trin. 12, 15, 25: PL 42, 1012. 226 Cf. Confess. 9, 10, 24: PL 32, 774. 227 Confess 10, 40, 65: PL 32, 807. 228 Cf. Ep. 48,1: PL 33, 188. 229 De civ. Dei 19, 19: PL 41, 647. 230 Solil. 1, 1, 5: PL 32, 872. 231 Cf. Serm. 335, 2: PL 39, 1569. 232 Ep. 217: PL 33, 978. 233 Cf. Ep. 91, 10: PL 33, 317-318. 234 Miscellanea Ag. I, 404. 235 Miscellanea Ag. I, 568.

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236 Cf. Serm. 17:2: PL 38, 125. 237 Cf. Serm. 46, 7, 14: PL 38, 278. 238 Cf. Ep. 128, 3: PL 33, 489. 239 Miscellanea Ag., I, 565. 240 Cf. Ep. 122, 1: PL 33, 470. 241 Cf. Miscellanea Ag. I, 353; Tractatus in Io 19, 22: PL 35, 1543-1582. 242 Cf. De catech. rudibus PL 40 309s. 243 Cf. POSSIDIO, Vita S. Augustini 19, 2-5 PL 32, 57 244 Cf. POSSIDIO, Ibid., 24, 14-25: PL 32, 5354; Serm. 25.8: PL 38, 170; Ep. 122, 2: PL 33, 471-472. 245 Cf. Serm. 335, 2: PL 39, 1569-1570; Ep. 65: PL 33, 234235. 246 Cf. POSSIDIO, Vita S. Augustini 11, 1 : PL 32, 42. 247 Cf. Ep. 211, 1-4: PL 3, 958-965. 248 POSSIDIO, Vita S. Augustini 31, 8: PL 32, 64. 249 Cf. Retract., prol. 2: PL 32, 584. 250 Cf. Ep. 128, 3: PL 33, 489; De gestis cum Emerito 7: PL 43, 702-703. 251 Cf. Post collationem contra Donatistas: PL 43, 651-690.
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252 Cf. POSSIDIO, Vita S. Augustini 9-14: PL 32, 40-45. 253 Cf. POSSIDIO, Ibid. 12, 1-2: PL 32, 43. 254 Cf. POSSIDIO, Ibid., 24 11: " . . . in die laborans et in nocte lucubrans": PL 32, 54. 255 Cf. Ep. 224, 2: PL 33, 1001-1002. 256 Ep. 1, 1: PL 33, 61. 257 De quantitate animae 14, 24: PL 32, 1049; Cf. De vera relig. 10, 20: PL 34, 131. 258 Cf. De vera relig. 39, 72: PL 34, 154. 259 Cf. Retract. 1, 8, 2: PL 32, 594; 1, 4, 4: PL 32, 590. 260 Cf. Ep. 118, 5, 33: PL 33, 448. 261 Cf. Contra Acad. 3, 20, 43: PL 32, 957. 262 Ep. 120, 3. 13: PL 33, 458. 263 Cf. De Trin. 1, 5, 8: PL 42, 825. 264 Serm. 27, 4: PL 38, 179. 265 Cf. De doctrina Christ. 2, 40, 60: PL 34, 55; De civ. Dei 8, 9: PL 41, 233. 266 Cf. Enarr. in Ps. 90, d. 2, 1 : PL 37, 1159-1160. 267 Cf. Ep. 28, 3, 3: PL 33, 112; 82, 1, 3: PL 33, 277.

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268 Cf. Ep. 137, 1, 3: PL 33, 516. 269 De doctrina Christ. 4, 5, 7: PL 34, 91-92. 270 Cf. De perf. iustr. hom. 17, 38: PL 44, 311-312. 271. Cf. De baptismo 4, 24, 31: PL 43, 174-175 m. 272 Cf. Contra Iulianum 6, 6-11: PL 45, 1510-1521. 273 Contra ep. Man. 5, 6: PL 42, 176; cf. C. Faustum 28, 2: PL 42, 483-486. 274 De baptismo 2, 3, 4: PL 43, 129. 275 Ep. 105, 16: PL 3, 403. 276 De civ. Dei 16, 2, 1: PL 41, 477. 277 Solil. 1, 2, 7: PL 32, 872. 278 De civ. Dei 2, 29, 2: PL 41, 78. 279 Cf. De diversis quaestionibus 83, q. 46, 2: PL 40, 29-31. 280 Cf. De Gen. ad litt. 5, 23, 44-45; 6, 6, 16-6, 12, 20: PL 34, 337-338; 346-347. 281 Cf. Ep. 189, 6: PL 33, 856. 282 Ep. 2298, 2: PL 33 1020. 283 Cf. Confess. 6, 7, 11-12: PL 32, 75; De ordine 1, 10, 30: PL 32, 991. 284 Cf. Ep. 26, 118-243, 266: PL 33, 103-107; 431-449;
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1054-1059; 1089-1091. 285 Cf. Confess. 4, 13, 20: PL 32, 701. 286 Cf. Confess. 10, 8, 15: PL 32, 758-786. 287 Cf. Confess 10, 34, 53: PL 32, 801. 288 Cf. Ep. 120, 4, 20: PL 33, 462. 289 Confess 3, 6, 10: PL 32, 687. 290 Solil. 1, 1, 3: PL 32, 870. 291 Confess 10, 27, 38: PL 32, 795. 292 Cf. Ep. 120, 4, 20: PL 33, 462. 293 Cf. De sancta virginitate 6, 6: PL 40, 339.

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