Presented by Fr. Bernard HOLZERTranslated by Fr. Leo BRASSARD

  1991. Augustine, the Message of Faith, Desclée de Brouwer. 1993. The Master – About Free Will, Institute of Augustinian Studies. 1994. Small Augustinian Studies, Institute of Augustinian Studies. 1995. The Homeland and the Way, Desclée de Brouwer. 1998, 2001. The God of Augustine, Le Cerf. 1998. Augustine the Preacher (395-411) Institute of Augustinian Studies. 1998 Augustine’s backyard, Institute of Augustinian Studies.

Goulven Madec was an Augustinian of the Assumption, one of the experts on St. Augustine, a member of the Institute of Augustinian Studies for forty years. He was an honorary professor at the Faculty of Theology of the Catholic Institute of Paris. He was a researcher emeritus at the CNRS (The National Center of Scientific Research).

A Good Student

A Professor’s Worries

Conversion in Milan

Bishop of Hippo

A Voluminous Production About Christian Doctrine

The Controversies

Saint Augustine and Venerable Emmanuel d’Alzon

354: Born at Thagaste on the 13th of November from Monica and Patricius.

Born on the 13th of November 354, Augustine, his brother Navigius, and his sister, whose name escapes us, were the children of Patricius and Monica, small land owners, farmers in Thagaste, (today Souk Aras, near the Algeria-Tunisia border) in the heart of the Roman Africa which covered grosso modo the Maghreb, a prosperous region, “the granary of Rome,” and furnished it with cereals, olive oil and wine.

North Africa in the Third Century

His parents were of mixed backgrounds. Monica was a good Christian. Patricius was a good pagan. He did not put up opposition to Monica’s educating her children into Christianity.

As a baby, Augustine received the baptism of the catechumens: the signing of the cross on the forehead, the grains of salt on his tongue, what was called then the “preliminary rites” of baptism.

Later, at about the age of seven, he became gravely ill; and being close to death he asked for baptism. But when he took a turn for the better, the ceremony was put off.

Augustine was always a Christian. “He had drunk, he says, the name of the Lord with the milk of his mother and he held this in the bottom of his child’s heart.” But undoubtedly he forgot about this his during the years of his adolescent errors.

361: Studies in Thagaste, “I was sent to school” (Confessions, 1, 8, 14).

363: Studies in Madura “My first stay outside my home town (II, 3, 5).

369: A year of idleness at Thagaste, “The stealing of pears” (I, 3, 8).

370: Student in Carthage, “Thanks to the subsidies of Romanius” (III, 1).

Around seventeen or eighteen years old, during his student years in Carthage, he had a concubine with whom he had a child. They named him ‘Given by God” or “Adeodatus.” Good father, Augustine said that this unwanted child knew how to make himself, loved.

371: Death of Patricius.

372: Adherence to Manichaeism (III, 6, 10).

374: Professorship at Thagaste, "The Loss of a friend" ( IV, 4, 7).

376: Professor in Carthage (IV, 7, 12)

376: A meeting with the Manichean Bishop, Faustus (V, 6, 11) Deception. Leaves for Rome (V, 8, 14)

384: In Milan. A visit to Ambrose. He listens to his sermons (VI, 3, 3).

He discovered the spiritual meaning of the Old Testament, and his Manicheans beliefs against the Law and the Prophets crumbled. This is of primary importance: Augustine from this point on could feel at home in the whole Bible and make it his.

385: The sending off of his concubine (VI, 15, 25)

Young, ambitious, Augustine ran after the honors, wealth, and marriage. He wanted to obtain the position of governor of a province, and enter the order of senators….

Monica had joined him in Milan and played the go between for a more honorable, rich partner: one needed much money to enter politics at that time also! Augustine accepted in the end to send away the one who was his faithful companion since the age of sixteen. It is surely not what he did the best but he says -and we have to give him credit for that – that his heart was torn asunder by the sending away of the one he loved.…

386: The Reading of the Platonicians (VII, 10, 16).

But there were some difficulties for his sensual imaginary way of thinking: how could reality, specifically God, be non-material? His salvation came in the reading some of the books of the Platonician Philosophers who suggested that he go within, that is that he convert. He thus entered into himself, under God’s guidance, and discovered the pure spirituality of the soul and of the God who created it.

But Augustine always had questions about Christ. He pictured him as an eminently superiorly wise being and on the witness of the Gospels, the one who had eaten and drunk, slept and walked, was happy and sad, has conversed with his friends and had led the life of a real man.

But he had no idea about the “Word made flesh” until Simplicianus, great Christian intellectual [a priest in the diocese of Milan], opened up for him the Prologue of John as a résumé of the Christian doctrine: Christ was at once the Word - God in God - and also at the same time the Word made flesh, that is the man Jesus-Christ, mediator between God and man. This also was another important moment for Augustine.

386: August. The Garden Scene (VIII, 12, 29) Cassiciacum Retreat (IX, 4, 7)

He has discovered the Truth, and he further had to make his life one with what he discovered. It was a painful process! The critical moment came in the garden of his residence in Milan He flayed his arms in a disorderly manner, he ended up under a fig tree and let the tears flow.

It is at this moment that he heard a child sing: “Take and read. Take and read.” He took held of a passage from the Letters to the Romans :” No more orgies, no more drinking bouts, no more philandering, no more debauchery, no more quarreling and no more jealousies, but instead put on Jesus-Christ and do not give in to the demands of the flesh.” (Romans 13, 13-14)

 

387: Augustine’s, Adeodat’s and Alypius’ Baptisms April 24-24 (IX, 6, 14)

On March 387, he came back to Milan to register to be baptized. Augustine, his friend Alypius, and his son Adeodatus followed Ambrose’s catechesis. They received from him the Symbol of the Apostles, the Creed, learned it by heart, and recited it solemnly.

During the Paschal Vigil of the 24th to the 25th of April in 387, like the others, Augustine was bathed by Ambrose in the baptismal font, three times, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

387: Return to Africa, death of Monica at Ostia (IX, 11, 28)

388: Visit of Roman Monasteries. He establishes himself at Thagaste in his parents’ home for a communitarian life.

391: He is called to the priesthood in January.

Augustine did not have a priestly vocation as such. Foreshadowing the inevitable, he used to avoid going to the cities where the Episcopal seat was vacant.

He came one day to Hippo Regius, on the North African shore, his mind at ease, since there was a bishop there, Valerius. But this one had the good idea to tell the assembly that he needed a priest to help him, to “second” him. Someone yelled: “Augustine!” And Augustine was obliged to be ordained. He cried a bit but he soon found his balance once again.

391: He establishes the Garden Monastery.

Valerius put at his disposition a garden within the parish grounds so that he could live in community with his brothers, according to the Rule established by the apostles themselves, that is according to the ideal of the primitive Christian community of Jerusalem. (cf. Acts 4, 32-35)

Possidius says that he taught at home and in the Church, that is, he continued instructing his brothers and began preaching in the Church. The two books about the Charter of Christian Life, that is, his commentary on the Sermon of the Mount, are probably occasioned by these instructions. He also took the practice of commenting on the letters of St. Paul. And he continued to combat Manichaeism.

395: He becomes Valerius’ coadjutor Bishop.

One day Valerius heard the rumor that a nearby church wanted to steal Augustine to make him Bishop. He hid Augustine in a safe place, and wrote a confidential letter to Aurelius, the primate of Carthage, asking him permission to ordain him bishop then and there.

Augustine thus became the bishop of Hippo in 395, perhaps June 430, at thirty five years old and in the prime of his life as to pastoral action. He brimmed over with energy.

396: Valerius dies in 396. Augustine becomes the titular Bishop of Hippo.

“Portraits”

Thousands of representations: miniatures, windows, sculptures, frescoes and tableaux, works of art and banal pieces of various sorts; it is an “imaginary museum”.

 

The most precious and worthy representation is the fresco in the Lateran which dates from the sixth Century.

The Pastor of Souls

Liturgical Assembly

The Daily Bread

Easter

The Table of the Lord

Spiritual Formation

In Carthage and Elsewhere

The Theologian/Servant

Augustine was bishop for a longtime and we can divine his service according to his doctrinal engagements and fights against the dualism of the Manicheans, from 387 to 400 from time to time; against the Donatists, from 300-412, in concurrence with the beginning of his priesthood and up to 420; against Paganism from 412to 426 when the City of God began to be written; against Pelagianism from 412 t0 430.

He often complained about the multiple duties of his charge, giving himself without cost.

His mornings were taken up with the “Episcopal hearings,” where he had to arbiter concrete and sometimes miserable conflicts and fights between Christians. He had to intercede before civil authorities, to be the first line of defense, be the antechamber, at times, and sometimes be dismissed by functionaries without having won his cause.

He was concerned about the poor, and God knows that there were many. He used to say sadly, “It is not right that the bishop have golden vessels and rebuke the hand of the beggar. Each day, so many beg, so many languish, there are so many indigents who address us, there are so many that we leave many in their state, because we do not have enough to give to all.”(Sermon 355)

“For you I am a Bishop, with you I am a Christian”

The formula has been codified by the Second Vatican council in its Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, (The Church, Light of the Nations) Number 32. Here is its context.

On the anniversary of his elevation to the Episcopate, before offering a meal “to his companions, the poor,” Augustine said:

“Why do I speak to you, why am I seated here, why am I in this life, if it is not that we should live together in Christ? That is my hope, my honor, my glory, my joy; this is what I am about! May your prayers come to help me, so that the one who deigned confer upon me this burden may carry it with me. As you pray in this fashion, you also pray for yourselves for my burden is no other than you yourselves. But if what I am for you scares me, I am reassured by what I am for you. In fact for you I am bishop, but with you I am a Christian: the first title is that of an assumed charge; the second is the effect of grace; the first one tells me of the dangers involved, the second tells me of my salvation.” (Sermon 340)

It is an estimate that Augustine preached some 8,000 times, more than 200 times per year.

He preached the content of the Bible, that is Christ. “For everything echoes Christ”, he said. The Church is the “School of Christ”; its library is the Bible; preaching is the explaining of the text, as it is customary to do in school circles. “Listen with me, I do not say ‘listen to me’ but ‘with me’ for in this school we are all brothers, heaven being the pulpit of our Master.” (Sermon 261)

“When I explain the Sacred Scriptures to you, it is as if we were breaking bread together – what I distribute does not belong to me. What you eat, I also eat; what you live from, I also do. We have the same storeroom in heaven for it is from there that the Word of God comes.” (Sermon 95)

Augustine’s daily and annual life was punctuated by the rhythm of the Liturgy. He celebrated the Eucharist daily with the faithful of his community. It was their daily bread: “Give us this day our daily bread,” can refer to physical nourishment which we all need; but it can as well refer to spiritual nourishment, which is as indispensible. It is the Eucharist for the “faithful”, that is the baptized, they who have received the “sacrament of faith.” It is also the Word of God incarnated in the Holy Scriptures.

“The readings which you hear daily, at Church, are your daily bread; the hymns which you sing are your daily bread for all of that is necessary on our journey here below. It is our viaticum.”

He personally instructed the catechumens, the adults who were requesting baptism. Augustine would teach them the Creed, the Symbol of our faith and the Our Father; the two manuals of the Christian, which they had to learn by heart, profess solemnly and meditate each day of their life

Finally the three holy days of the “Crucified, the Buried and the Resurrected” arrived. (Letter 55, 23). And there was the paschal vigil: “The Mother of all holy vigils, during which the whole world wakes.” (Sermon 219) It is dark, but the candles glow and fill our eyes with joy.

“If you are in this manner the Body of Christ and his members, it is your own mystery which is laid down on the Table of the Lord. It is your own mystery which you are receiving. To what you are, you answer: ‘Amen.’ You are thus committing yourself. You hear, in fact ‘The Body of Christ,’ and you respond ‘amen,’ meaning ‘Yes it is truly true.’ Be a member of Christ, so that your Amen will be true.”(Sermon 227)

Augustine is without a doubt the “intellectual” of this group of Bishops.

It is not possible for me to have you visit all the monuments left by Augustine: more than 800 sermons, 300 letters, and about 100 books. To read them profitably, it is absolutely necessary to replace them in life for they were all occasioned by a precise event. They were written for pastoral reasons: homilies, correspondences and controversies… You will have to content yourselves with a summary of some of the major works.

 Engraving of Saint Augustin by Jean-Baptiste deChampaigne

399: The closing of the pagan temples. He redacts the First Catechesis.

400: Between 397 and 400 he writes The Confessions.

First Catechesis

The Christian Doctrine

The Confessions

The City of God

The Commentaries on the Psalms

The Homilies on the Gospel of John

On the Trinity

410: The fall of Rome on August 24th.

411: Augustine attends the conference with the Donatists in Carthage.

413: He begins the writing of the City of God. Engages in a fight with Pelagius.

About Manichaeism

About Donatism

About Paganism

About Pelagianism

About Christian Life simply

426: Eraclius is named the successor of Augustin. He writes the Revisions.

429: The Vandals arrive in Africa. He debates about grace in the Provinces.

430: The Vandals arrives at Hippo’s door. Death of Augustine the 28th of August.

Saint Augustine is our patriarch, as Father d’Alzon loves to call him. His work – and especially “The City of God” - is included in Fr. d’Alzon’s own program of studies and in his higher education.

Augustine is the true spiritual father of Fr. Emmanuel d’Alzon and still more, is intellectual teacher.

His rule is part of our Constitutions. “It defines a spirit bearing the mark of the primacy of the communitarian life centered on God, possessing all things in common, manifesting unity in diversity, humility and wonder, moderation and penance.”

“Lord my God, my hope, hear my prayer, for fear that too tired I do not want to seek you anymore, but make it so that I always seek your face with ardor. You, dear one, give me the strength to seek you. You made me find you and you have given me the hope to find you more and more.” (On the Trinity)