ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO (AUG. 28TH)

 

St. Augustine of Hippo, writing his "Confessions"

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West)

Today, on the 28th of August, the Western Orthodox celebrate the testimony and contribution of St. Augustine of Hippo! 

St. Augustine was born in Numidia in 354 AD to Patricius and Monica, Roman citizens of African heritage, now known to be ethnic Berbers. Monica, celebrated yesterday, was a Christian saint of great patience and prayer. Patricius was a dissolute man of evil habits who only converted to Christianity on his death bed. St. Augustine had two siblings, a younger brother named Navigius and a yonger sister who would also become a saint, named Perpetua.

Augustine started his legal training at the age of 11 in Numidia, traveling to Carthage at 17 to continue the study of rhetoric and debate, and on to Rome after his father died, where he continued his studies for a time, before ending up in Milan, where he served as a lawyer for some 15 years. During this time, he lived a licentious and riotous life, full of sexual immorality and vice, gluttony and foolish entertainment. He had his only child during this time by a slave girl, whom Augustine named Adeodatus, and who was known by contemporaries as a genius at a young age, surpassing his father in skills of memory and artistry before his untimely death. 

Augustine’s conversion experience, after years of his mother’s agonizing prayers for his conversion, and his own cosmopolitan worldliness, was one of the most significant turning points in Western civilization. The sudden and unprepared nature of the conversion led Augustine to believe in predestination and monergism, which has influenced Western thinking through Scholasticism and the Reformation. 

In 386, retiring to the seclusion of a garden one hot August day, Augustine heard a child’s voice say “pick up and read” and picked up the volume on the table before him, reading at random Romans 13: 13–14: "Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.” 

St. Augustine imparting a blessing

In his “Confessions”, written years later, Augustine would say - “Belatedly I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new, belatedly I loved thee. For see, thou wast within and I was without, and I sought thee out there. Unlovely, I rushed heedlessly among the lovely things thou hast made. Thou wast with me, but I was not with thee. These things kept me far from thee; even though they were not at all unless they were in thee. Thou didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and didst chase away my blindness. Thou didst breathe fragrant odors and I drew in my breath; and now I pant for thee. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for thy peace.”

During his time in Milan, Augustine became close friends with St. Ambrose, the bishop of that city, and grew to respect him as his own father. Through years of friendship with St. Ambrose, Augustine was restored to faith and purity, and saw the true potential of Christian life for good. It was during this time that he put away his second concubine and decided to live a celibate life. St. Ambrose baptized St. Augustine on Easter of 387, started living a monastic life with his mother, sister and son the following year, returning to Africa to convert his family estate into a monastic institution.  He was ordained a priest in 391 in Hippo, not far from Carthage. In 395 he was made a coadjutor bishop of Hippo, and full bishop the following year. He remained as bishop of Hippo until his death in 430. 

St. Augustine encountering a mystical child on the beach when meditating upon the Trinity

During his tenure as bishop, St. Augustine wrote over 100 books, of which the vast majority were preserved until the present day, establishing him as the singular theological authority within the Western Christian Tradition. He wrote on topics of Scripture, Original Sin, Predestination, Free Will, Epistemology, Sexuality, Baptismal Regeneration, Sacramental Theology, Just War Theory, Monasticism, Philosophy, Natural Sciences, Astrology, Platonism, Debates with Heretics and Schismatics, and Christian Cosmology. He had a fertile imagination, was widely read in pagan and legal authors, and was well acquainted with Scripture and Latin theologians. He did not speak or read Greek fluently, so he was largely cut off from the Greek theologians, and relied heavily on the old Vulgate for his understanding of the New Testament. This led to a lack of appreciation for the important theological work being done in the East by the Cappadocians and the Greek Fathers, and resulted in the theological in-focus of the Western Church, which eventually resulted to the unfortunate Schism between the Greek East and the Latin West. While disputing many of his anachronistic and individualistic Latin interpretations, the Orthodox world still glorifies St. Augustine as an important saint, and many, including St. Gregory Palamas, quote him extensively. We celebrate St. Augustine despite his shortcomings and remember that we are called to the conciliar mind of the Church, expressed through synods and councils, confirmed by the reception of local churches, and sealed with the fruit of the Holy Spirit, not to the opinions of individual fathers or individual local churches.

Collect for St. Augustine:

Almighty God, the light of the minds that know Thee, the life of the souls that love Thee, and the strength of the hearts that serve Thee: Help us, following the example of Thy servant St. Augustine of Hippo, so to know Thee that we may truly love Thee, and so to love Thee that we may fully serve Thee, Whom to serve is perfect freedom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, Who livest and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, One God, world without end. Amen.