Augustine of Hippo
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Barbarians surged into the empire, threatening the Roman way of life as never before. The Christian church also faced attack from internal heretics. The potential destruction of culture, civilization, and the church was more than an occasional nightmare—it was perceived as an immediate threat. And Augustine answered with such wisdom, his responses are still considered by some to be the church's most important writings after the Bible. From his birth in a small North African town, Augustine knew the religious differences overwhelming the Roman Empire: his father was a pagan who honored the old Punic gods; his mother was a zealous Christian. But the adolescent Augustine was less interested in religion and learning than in sex and high living—like joining with friends to steal pears from a neighbor's vineyard "not to eat them ourselves but simply to throw them to the pigs.”
His mother finally caught up with him and set herself to find her son a proper wife. Augustine had a concubine he deeply loved and who had given him a son, but he would not marry her because it would have ruined him socially and politically. Added to the emotional strain of forsaking his lover and the shift in philosophies, Augustine was struggling with himself. For years he had sought to overcome his fleshly passions and nothing seemed to help. It seemed to him that even his smallest transgressions were weighted with meaning. Key Moment: One afternoon, he wrestled anxiously about such matters while walking in his garden. Suddenly he heard a child's sing-song voice repeating, "Take up and read." On a table lay a collection of Paul's epistles he'd been reading; he picked it up and read the first thing he saw: "Not in reveling and drunkenness, not in lust and wantonness, not in quarrels and rivalries. Rather, arm yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, spend no more thought on nature and nature's appetites” Augustine's conversion sent shockwaves through his life. He resigned his professorship, dashed off a note to Ambrose telling of his conversion, and retreated with his friends and mother to a country villa in Cassiciacum. There he continued discussing philosophy and churning out books in a Neoplatonist vein. After half a year, he returned to Milan to be baptized by Ambrose, then headed back to Thagaste to live as a writer and thinker. By the time he reached his home town (a journey lengthened by political turmoil), he had lost his mother, his son, and one of his closest friends. These losses propelled Augustine into a deeper, more vigorous commitment: he and friends established a lay ascetic community in Thagaste to spend time in prayer and the study of the Scriptures. In 391, Augustine traveled to Hippo to see about setting up a monastery in the area. His reputation went before him. The story goes that, seeing the renowned layman in church one Sunday, Bishop Valerius put aside his prepared sermon and preached on the urgent need for priests in Hippo. The crowd stared at Augustine and then pushed him forward for ordination. Against his will, Augustine was made a priest. The laity, thinking his tears of frustration were due to his wanting to be a bishop rather than priest, tried to assure him that good things come to those who wait. Valerius, who spoke no Punic (the local language), quickly handed over teaching and preaching duties to his new priest, who did speak the local language. Within five years, after Valerius died, Augustine became bishop of Hippo. |
Quotes
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"My heart is restless ‘til it finds rest in Thee"
-Augustine of Hippo (354-430) “Light of my heart, do not let my darkness speak to me.” -Augustine of Hippo “Late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved you! You were within me, and I was outside; and I sought you outside and in my loneliness fell upon those lovely things that you have made. You were with me, but I was not with you. I was kept from you by those things, yet had they not been in you, they would not have been at all. You called me and cried to me and broke open my deafness; you sent forth your beams and shone upon me and chased away my blindness; you breathed your fragrance upon me, and I drew in my breath and now I pant for you; I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst for you; you touched me, and I burn for your peace.” -Augustine of Hippo "You have put salt in our mouths that we may thirst for you." -Augustine of Hippo "That you may love God, let him dwell in you and love Himself through you." -Augustine of Hippo "A temptation arises: it is the wind. It disturbs you: it is the surging of the sea. This is the time to awaken Christ and let Him remind you of those words, “Who can this be? even the winds and the sea obey Him.” -Augustine of Hippo "It was my old “mistresses,” the most vain and trifling of things that held me back. They tugged gently at the sleeve of my flesh, and whispered softly in my ear: “can you really part from us? From this moment on shall we never be with you again?” What shameful things they suggested! And then I hardly heard them speaking, for they were not openly contradicting me face to face, but rather stood muttering softly behind my back and they slyly tugged at me from behind as I left them, trying to make me look back at them. In this way they held me back as I hesitated to shake them loose, snatch myself away and leap over to the place where you, Lord were calling me." -Augustine of Hippo “When my old habits whisper to me, Lord, drown out their temptations with the thunder of your voice, calling me to walk with you. But now the voice of my old unruly habit was faint, for in the very direction I had turned in the place to which I had decided, still trembling to go, I saw the chaste dignity of Self-Control. She stretched forth those holy hands of hers, full of a multitude of good examples, to receive and embrace me. In her company there were so many young men and maidens, a multitude of youth of every age with Self-Control herself in their midst, not at all barren, but a fruitful mother of joys-her children by you, Lord, her Husband. And she encouraged me with a playful smile as if to say: “cant you do what even these young people have done? Why do you stand in your own strength? so that you fail to stand at all. Cast yourself on Him!” -Augustine of Hippo “The whole of life of the good Christian is a holy longing” -Augustine of Hippo “Let the wickedness around and within you drive you to the mercy of God. Let the loss of all that fades and decays wean you from the fickle love of a fleeting world. He is the One we should love. He is our eternal Sabbath, our place of final repose” -Augustine of Hippo “Man desires to praise you, Lord, for he is one of your creatures. Though he bears the mark of death wherever he goes as a testimony to his sin—a reminder that you resist the proud. Yet still because man is your creation, he desires to praise you. You move us to delight in praising you. God has made us for Himself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Him.” -Augustine of Hippo “Oh God, stay with me. Let no word cross my lips, that is not your words, no thought enter my mind that is not your thought, no deed ever be done or entertained by me that is not your deed.” -Augustine of Hippo “And while we spoke of the eternal Wisdom, longing for it and straining for it with all the strength of our hearts, for one fleeting instant we reached out and touched it. Then, with a sigh, leaving our spiritual harvest bound to it, we returned to the sounds of our own speech, in which each word has a beginning and an ending- far, far different from your Word, our Lord, who abides in Himself for ever, yet never grows old and gives new life to all things." -Augustine of Hippo “For even now, my soul, you have become tired of this world’s empty deceits. Entrust to the truth whatever you have of the truth, and you shall lose nothing…what is decayed will once again flourish; what is diseased will be healed; whatever in you that is perishable will be transformed and renewed and made whole again. And what is perishable in you will not pull you down to the grave, but will stand with you and abide forever in heaven, before God who abides and endures forever. Why then my soul, are you being perverse by following the lead of the perishable flesh? Rather let the flesh turn around and follow you.” -Augustine of Hippo “Your persistent longing is your persistent voice. But when love grows cold, the heart grows silent. Burning love is the outcry of the heart! If you are filled with longing all the time, you will keep crying out, and if your love perseveres, your cry will be heard without fail.” -Augustine of Hippo “There can only be two basic loves, the love of God unto the forgetfulness of self, or the love of self to the forgetfulness of God.” -Augustine of Hippo “Seek not to understand so that thou might believe, but believe so that thou might understand” -Augustine of Hippo “He who created us without our help, will not save us without our consent.“ -Augustine of Hippo “living a just and holy life requires one to be capable of an objective and impartial evaluation of things: to love things, that is to say, in the right order, so that you do not love what is not to be loved, or fail to love what is to be loved, or have a greater love for what should be loved less, or an equal love for things that should be loved less or more, or a lesser or greater love for things that should be loved equally." -Augustine of Hippo “Our whole business in this life is to restore to health the eyes of our hearts, whereby God may be seen.” -Augustine of Hippo "There is a different kind of prayer without ceasing; it is longing. Whatever you may be doing, if you long for the day of everlasting rest do not cease praying. If you do not wish to cease praying, then do not cease your longing. Your persistent longing is your persistent voice. But when love grows cold, the heart grows silent. Burning love is the outcry of the heart! If you are filled with longing all the time, you will keep crying out, and if your love perseveres, your cry will be heard without fail." -Augustine of Hippo “Return to your heart, O you transgressors, and hold fast to him who made you. Stand with him and you shall stand fast. Rest in him and you shall be at rest. Where do you go along these rugged paths? Where are you going?…Why then will you wander farther and farther in these difficult and toilsome ways? There is no rest where you seek it. Seek what you seek; but remember that it is not where you seek it. You seek for a blessed life in the land of death. It is not there. For how can there be a blessed life where life itself is not?” -Augustine of Hippo Source: Confessions “Evil passes your door first as a stranger, then enters as a guest, and finally installed itself as a master.” -Augustine of Hippo “Evil has no power to create, can only bend and twist the good that God has created.” -Augustine of Hippo "Mankind is divided into two sorts: such as live according to man, and such as live according to God. These we call the two cities… The Heavenly City outshines Rome. There, instead of victory, is truth” -Augustine of Hippo There is a different kind of prayer without ceasing; it is longing. Whatever you may be doing, if you long for the day of everlasting rest do not cease praying. If you do not wish to cease praying, then do not cease your longing. Your persistent longing is your persistent voice. But when love grows cold, the heart grows silent. Burning love is the outcry of the heart! If you are filled with longing all the time, you will keep crying out, and if your love perseveres, your cry will be heard without fail. -Augustine of Hippo Source: Expositions of the Psalms “Ask the beauty of the earth, the beauty of the sky. Question the order of the stars, the sun whose brightness lights the day, the moon who whose splendor softens the gloom of night. Ask of the living creatures that move in the waves, that roam the earth, that fly in the heavens. Question all these and they will answer, “Yes we are beautiful.” Their very loveliness is their confession of God: for who made these things, but he who is himself unchangeable beauty.” -Augustine of Hippo What is it that goes on within the soul, that it takes greater delight if things it loves are found or restored to it than if it had always possessed them?…The storm tosses seafarers about and threatens them with shipwreck: they all grow pale at their coming death. Then the sky and the sea become calm, and they exult exceedingly, just as they had feared exceedingly. Or a dear friend is ill.…All those who long to see him in good health are in mind sick along with him. He gets well again, and although he does not yet walk with his former vigor, there is joy such as did not obtain before when he walked well and strong.…Everywhere a great joy is preceded by a greater suffering. -Augustine of Hippo. Source: Confessions Lord to turn away from you is to fall. To turn to you is to rise. To stand before you is to abide forever. -Augustine of Hippo We shall rest and we shall see, We shall see and we shall know, We shall know and we shall love, We shall love and we shall praise. Behold our end which is no end. -Augustine of Hippo "What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like." -Augustine of Hippo |
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