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Feast Day: August 28
Also
Known As
Aurelius Augustinus; Doctor of Grace
Profile
His father
was a pagan who converted
on his death bed; his mother was Saint Monica,
a devout Christian. Trained in Christianity, he lost his faith in youth
and led a wild life. Lived with a Carthaginian woman from the age of 15
through 30. Fathered a son whom he named Adeotadus, which means the
gift of God. Taught rhetoric @ Carthage and Milan.
After investigating and experimenting with several philosophies, he became
a Manichaean
for several years; it taught of a great struggle between good and evil,
and featured a lax moral code. A summation of his thinking at the time
comes from his Confessions: "God, give me chastity and
continence - but not just now."
Augustine finally broke with the Manichaeans
and was converted by the prayers of his mother
and the help of Saint Ambrose
of Milan,
who baptized him. On the death of his mother
he returned to Africa, sold his property, gave the proceeds to the poor,
and founded a monastery.
Monk.
Priest.
Preacher. Bishop
of Hippo. Founded religious communities. Fought Manichaeism,
Donatism,
Pelagianism
and other heresies . Oversaw his church and his see during the fall of the
Roman Empire to the Vandals. Doctor
of the Church. His later thinking can also be summed up in a line from his
writings: "Our hearts were made for You, O Lord, and they are
restless until they rest in you."
Born
13
November 354
@ Tagaste, Numidia, North Africa (Souk-Ahras, Algeria) as Aurelius
Augustinus
Died
28
August 430
@ Hippo
Patronage
brewers,
people named Augusta,
Augustina
or Augustine,
printers,
sore eyes,
theologians
Representation
child; dove; pen; shell
Prayers by Saint Augustine
Act of Hope
Act of
Petition
Breathe in Me,
Holy Spirit
Lord Jesus,
Let Me Know Myself
Prayer for the
Indwelling of the Spirit
Prayer for the
Sick
Prayer of Joy
at the Birth of Jesus
Prayer of
Trust in God's Heavenly Promise
Prayer on
Finding God after a Long Search
Prayer to Our
Lady, Mother of Mercy
Prayer to Seek
God Continually
Watch, O Lord
Readings
God has no need of your money, but the poor have. You
give it to the poor, and God receives it.
Saint Augustine
Daily advance, then, in this love, both by praying and by
well doing, that through the help of Him who enjoined it on you, and whose
gift it is, it may be nourished and increased, until, being perfected, it
render you perfect.
Saint Augustine
What do you possess if you possess not God?
Saint Augustine
Unhappy is the soul enslaved by the love of anything that
is mortal.
Saint Augustine
The love of worldly possessions is a sort of bird line,
which entangles the soul, and prevents it flying to God.
Saint Augustine
This very moment I may, if I desire, become the friend of
God.
Saint Augustine
God bestows more consideration on the purity of the
intention with which our actions are performed than on the actions
themselves.
Saint Augustine
I will suggest a means whereby you can praise God all day
long, if you wish. Whatever you do, do it well, and you have praised God.
Saint Augustine
This is the business of our life. By labor and prayer to
advance in the grace of God, till we come to that height of perfection in
which, with clean hearts, we may behold God.
Saint Augustine
God in his omnipotence could not give more, in His wisdom
He knew not how to give more, in His riches He had not more to give, than
the Eucharist.
Saint Augustine
God does not command impossibilities, but by commanding
admonishes you do what you can and to pray for what you cannot, and aids
you that you may be able.
Saint Augustine
Our life and our death are with our neighbor.
Saint Augustine
Conquer yourself and the world lies at your feet.
Saint Augustine
O eternal truth, true love and beloved eternity. You are
my God. To you do I sigh day and night. When I first came to know you, you
drew me to yourself so that I might see that there were things for me to
see, but that I myself was not yet ready to see them. Meanwhile you
overcame the weakness of my vision, sending forth most strongly the beams
of your light, and I trembled at once with love and dread.
I sought a way to gain the strength which I needed to enjoy you. But I did
not find it until I embraced "the mediator between God and men, the
man Christ Jesus, who is above all, God blessed for ever." He was
calling me and saying: "I am the way of truth, I am the life."
Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved
you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I
searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things
which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created
things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would have
not been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my
deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You
breathed you fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I
have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I
burned for your peace.
from the Confessions of Saint Augustine
Neither are the souls of the pious dead separated from
the Church which even now is the kingdom of Christ. Otherwise there would
be no remembrance of them at the altar of God in the communication of the
Body of Christ.
from The City of God by Saint Augustine
A Christian people celebrates together in religious
solemnity the memorials of the martyrs, both to encourage their being
imitated and so that it can share in their merits and be aided by their
prayers."
from Against Faustus the Manichean, by Saint Augustine
There is an ecclesiastical discipline, as the faithful
know, when the names of the martyrs are read aloud in that place at the
altar of God, where prayer is not offered for them. Prayer, however, is
offered for the dead who are remembered. For it is wrong to pray for a
martyr, to whose prayers we ought ourselves be commended.
from Sermons by Saint Augustine
At the Lord's table we do not commemorate martyrs in the
same way that we do others who rest in peace so as to pray for them, but
rather that they may pray for us that we may follow in their footsteps.
from Homilies on John by Saint Augustine
Since we cannot, as yet, understand that He was begotten
by the Father before the day-star, let us celebrate His birth of the
Virgin in the nocturnal hours. Since we do not comprehend how His name
existed before the light of the sun, let us recognize His tabernacle
placed in the sun. Since we do not, as yet, gaze upon the Son inseparably
united with His Father, let us remember Him as the 'bridegroom coming out
of his bride chamber.' Since we are not yet ready for the banquet of our
Father, let us grow familiar with the manger of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Saint Augustine
He prays for us as our priest, prays in us as our Head,
and is prayed to by us as our God. Therefore let us acknowledge our voice
in him and his in us.
Saint Augustine
Question the beauty of the earth, the sea, the air
distending and diffusing itself, the sky... question all these realities.
All respond: 'See, we are beautiful.' These beauties are subject to
change. Who made them if not the Beautiful One who is not subject to
change?
Saint Augustine
One and the same Word of God extends throughout the
Scripture, that it is one and the same Utterance that resounds in the
mouths of all the sacred writers, since He who was in the beginning God
with God has no need for separate syllables; for he is not subject to
time.
Saint Augustine
Jesus Christ will be Lord of all, or he will not be Lord
at all.
Saint Augustine
If physical things please you, then praise God for them,
but turn back your love to Him who created them, lest in the things that
please you, you displease Him. If souls please you, love them in God; for
in themselves they are changeable, but in Him they are firmly established.
Without Him they pass away and perish. In Him, then, let them be loved,
and carry along with you to Him as many souls as you can, and say to them,
"Let us love Him, let us love Him; He made the world and is not far
from it. He did not make all things and then leave them, but they are of
Him and in Him. See, there He is wherever truth is loved. He is within the
very heart, yet the heart has strayed from Him. Return to your heart, O
you transgressors, and hold fast to Him who made you. Stand with Him and
you will stand fast. Rest in Him and you shall be at rest."
Saint Augustine, from The Confessions
Let us understand that God is a physician, and that
suffering is a medicine for salvation, not a punishment for damnation.
Saint Augustine
O Sacrament of Love! O sign of Unity! O bond of Charity!
He who would have Life finds here indeed a Life to live in and a Life to
live by.
Saint Augustine
If you see that you have not yet suffered tribulations,
consider it certain that you have not begun to be a true servant of God;
for Saint Paul says plainly that all who chose to live piously in Christ,
shall suffer persecutions
Saint Augustine
I speak to you who have just been reborn in baptism, my
little children in Christ, you who are the new offspring of the Church,
gift of the Father, proof of Mother Church's fruitfulness. All of you who
stand fast in the Lord are a holy seed, a new colony of bees, the very
flower of our ministry and fruit of our toil, my joy and my crown. It is
the words of the Apostle that I address to you: Put on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and make no provision for the flesh and its desires, so that you
may be clothed with the life of him whom you have put on in this
sacrament. You have all been clothed with Christ by your baptism in him.
There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor freeman; there
is neither male nor female; you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Such is the power of this sacrament: it is a sacrament of new life which
begins here and now with the forgiveness of all past sins, and will be
brought to completion in the resurrection of the dead. You have been
buried with Christ by baptism into death in order that, as Christ has
risen from the dead, you also may walk in newness of life.
You are walking now by faith, still on pilgrimage in a mortal body away
from the Lord; but he to whom your steps are directed is himself the sure
and certain way for you: Jesus Christ, who for our sake became man. For
all who fear him he has stored up abundant happiness, which he will reveal
to those who hope in him, bringing it to completion when we have attained
the reality which even now we possess in hope.
This is the octave day of your new birth. Today is fulfilled in you the
sign of faith that was prefigured in the Old Testament by the circumcision
of the flesh on the eighth day after birth. When the Lord rose from the
dead, he put off the mortality of the flesh; his risen body was still the
same body, but it was no longer subject to death. By his resurrection he
consecrated Sunday, or the Lord's day. Though the third after his passion,
this day is the eighth after the Sabbath, and thus also the first day of
the week.
And so your own hope of resurrection, though not yet realized, is sure and
certain, because you have received the sacrament or sign of this reality,
and have been given the pledge of the Spirit. If, then, you have risen
with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the
right hand of God. Set your hearts on heavenly things, not the things that
are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in
God. When Christ, your life, appears, then you too will appear with him in
glory.
from a sermon by Saint Augustine
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