St. Augustine Series

There can be little doubt that of the nine books set down to describe Augustine’s life, Book VIII is everyone’s favorite. It is the centerpiece of the story, the necessary hinge on which all the action turns. 

It was never mere proof of God’s existence that set Augustine on fire; it was, rather, the grace to remain steadfast in following the Lord, indeed, in falling in love with the Lord.

In hearing St. Ambrose, St. Augustine began to distinguish between mere eloquence and the real truth.

Not only does the example of St. Monica illustrate the power of prayer but it reaches into the very meaning of motherhood as well.

What was it about the temptation to Manichaeism, the allure it offered a young man like Augustine, that proved so powerful, so seductive that it nearly did him in?

What will God, whose chief instrument is often irony, choose as His weapon to pull Augustine back from the brink? A book by Cicero.

Augustine, of course, was not the first to chart the cycle of lust, as anyone for whom the body/soul connection remains a work in progress well knows.

Like Mr. Chesterton, it would never have occurred to St. Augustine to assign blame for the world’s problems to anyone other than himself.

When it comes to our role in salvation, St. Augustine sits squarely between the heretical extremes of Luther and Pelagius.

Above all, St. Augustine wished to remain faithful to the grace of an encounter that had upended his life.

The first half of Augustine’s life was spent amid the remnants of a Greek and Roman world; the latter half was spent in the company of provincial Africans, to whom he would unravel the mysteries of a shared faith.

Why did St. Augustine write “The City of God”? Why should it continue to compel our attention today?

The sheer impact of St. Augustine upon the life of the Church, of the emerging medieval world he had a hand in shaping, has never been equaled. 

St. Augustine, for all that he’s immersed in a disintegrating world, has at the same time quite succeeded in transcending it—thanks to the grace of a conversion that will literally lift him above circumstance.

For St. Augustine, there are but two characters that matter above all in the human story: God and the Self.

St. Augustine had to face the threat that never goes away: the menace of heresy.

Who among us is erudite enough to set about measuring the immensity of the achievement wrought by Augustine, whose depths clearly defy one’s best efforts to plumb?