Saint Augustine

Today is the Feast Day of Saint Augustine. Through trust and persistent prayer of Saint Monica, his mother, Augustine converted and became one of the most influential thinkers of the Church. Saint Monica's life can never be separated from that of her son, the great Saint Augustine, convert, bishop, and doctor of the Church. What we know of her, for the most part, is the account that Augustine gives of her in his Confessions.

Monica's almsgiving and her habits of prayer annoyed her husband, but he treated her with a sort of reverence. By Monica’s sweetness and patience, she began a successful apostolate among the wives and mothers of her native town. They knew that she suffered, as they did, and her words and example had a proportionate effect. All Monica's anxiety centered on her son Augustine. He was wayward and lazy. Monica prayed constantly to God for the soul of her son. She went tearfully to the bishop to ask him to help and he responded famously,

"the child of those tears shall never perish."

The story of Augustine's life, up until his conversion, is written in the autobiographical Confessions, the most intimate and well-known glimpse into an individual's soul ever written, as well as a fascinating philosophical, theological, mystical, poetic and literary work.

He went to Rome and then Milan in 386. Monica followed him and they met Saint Ambrose, who was able to see the conversion of her son and his baptism after Monica's 17 years of tears and prayer. Saint Ambrose, the bishop and Doctor of the Church, gave sermons that inspired Augustine to look for the truth he had always sought in the faith he had rejected. He received baptism and soon after, his mother, Saint Monica, died with the knowledge that all she had hoped for in this world had been fulfilled.

On a visit to Hippo, he was proclaimed priest and then bishop against his will. He later accepted it as the will of God and spent the rest of his life as the pastor of the North African town, from where he spent much time refuting the writings of heretics. Saint Augustine grew to become one the most significant and influential thinkers in the history of the Catholic Church. Augustine was a great seeker of truth. His teachings were the foundation of Christian doctrine for a millennium.

Words of Pope Benedict XVI
"Saint Augustine understood that it was not he who had found Truth, but that Truth itself, which is God, pursued found him," the Pontiff reflected. Referring to a passage from Augustine's "Confessions," in which the saint is with his mother and both "for a moment touch the heart of God in the silence of creatures," the Holy Father said: "creatures must be silent so that there will be a silence in which God can speak. This is also true in our time: Sometimes there is a sort of fear of silence, of recollection, of reflecting on one's acts, on the profound meaning of one's life. There is fear of seeking the Truth, or perhaps there is fear that the Truth will find us, will grip us and change our life, as happened to St. Augustine."

"Dear brothers and sisters," the Pope concluded, "I would like to say to all, also to those in a difficult moment in their faith journey, those who do not participate much in the life of the Church, or those who live 'as if God did not exist' that they not be afraid of the Truth, that they never interrupt their journey toward it, that they never cease to seek the profound truth about themselves and about things with the internal eyes of the heart. God will not fail to give Light so that one can see," he said, "and Warmth to feel the heart that loves us and that wants to be loved."

From the Confessions of Saint Augustine
"Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new; late have I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you, they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace."