The Church Year

Aurelius Augustinus was born on November 13, 354, in Tagaste, in what is now Algeria. Tagaste was thoroughly Roman in culture, and Augustine’s education was based on the classical curriculum. His study of Virgil remained throughout his life a touchstone for literary eloquence and beauty, characteristics that mark all of Augustine’s writings. It was his encounter with Cicero’s now-lost Hortensius, a treatise that extolled the excellence and beauty of a life devoted to philosophy, that inspired Augustine at the age of 18 to take up a career as a professional academic.

St. Augustine of Hippo

Self-aware of his sharp intelligence, Augustine saw in the study and teaching of the Latin literary heritage the key to his worldly advancement. His parents encouraged their son in his pursuit of success, making great personal sacrifice to support and finance his education.

Augustine’s career as a teacher of rhetoric led him from Africa to Rome and then to Milan, in those years the seat of the Empire. The Bishop of Milan, Ambrose, was a powerful churchman from a wealthy and well-connected family. Before meeting Ambrose, Augustine’s experiences with the Church had been ambivalent. Though Augustine’s father had been a pagan almost until his death, his mother was a devout Christian.

A man of Roman culture and sophistication, Augustine found the language of the Latin translation of the Bible available at that time crude and repellent, and the tenets of the Church seemed to him unphilosophical and barbaric. It was not until he met Ambrose that he encountered a Christian he looked up to. It was through Ambrose, who baptized Augustine in 387, that Augustine saw the riches that Christianity had to offer.

After his conversion, Augustine felt that to live his Christian vocation fully, he needed to withdraw from worldly life to live a quasi-monastic existence of prayer and study with a few like-minded friends. It was with this goal in mind that Augustine returned to Tagaste with a small number of companions. In 391 while worshipping at the church in Hippo, he was spotted by a bishop who convinced the congregation that Augustine would make an excellent priest. They agreed and he was forcibly ordained on the spot, a practice not uncommon at the time. Five years later, Augustine was ordained Bishop of Hippo, a position he held for over 30 years, until his death during the Vandal siege of Hippo in 430 on August 28, his feast day.

Considered by many the most important thinker of early Christianity, St. Augustine has long been revered as one of the Doctors of the Church. Noted even by his contemporaries for his prodigious intelligence and vast learning, his advice on theological and ecclesiastical questions was widely sought. The City of God, which argues against the idea that Rome’s fall was punishment for betrayal of paganism, laid the groundwork for systematic approaches to theological work.

The impact of his thinking on the history of the church has been profound. Though the Catholic tradition never fully came to accept Augustinian notions of predestination — the doctrine that God’s grace and therefore redemption is not bestowed equally on all but rather is given to some and not to others based on God’s will and not on any merit or choice on the part of man — this idea was a central component in the highly influential thought of both Thomas Aquinas, exponent of the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages, and of John Calvin, a major figure of the Reformation. Ideas such as this, along with his perspectives on Original Sin, sexual concupiscence and the production of knowledge, continue to play a vital role in theological debates.

An interesting aspect of Augustine’s work is that he virtually invented the genre of autobiography, particularly spiritual autobiography. There is no document earlier than Augustine’s Confessions in which an author so minutely and penetratingly wrote of his or her own life and development. Structured as a confession to God — a confession of faith as well as of past transgressions — that we as readers are allowed to overhear, the Confessions tells of Augustine’s long and painful search for the truth.

The writing of a spiritual autobiography is an excellent way to reflect on how God has been at work throughout the course of one’s life. Its shape and style does not matter, nor does it matter whether the author feels any particular literary gift. As the feast day of St. Augustine approaches, you might consider taking advantage of one of those lazy summer days to mark the occasion by following Augustine’s example. As Augustine pointed out, this is an excellent way of lifting up to God in love our amazement, gratitude and thanks for the many gifts with which He has blessed us.

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