Saint Augustine of Hippo (also known as Aurelius Augustinus; Doctor of Grace) was born around 354 A.D., at Tagaste, Numidia, North Africa (Souk-Ahras, Algeria) as Aurelius Augustinus. He was the son of Patricius, a pagan, and of Saint Monica, and he received a Christian education.
He lost his faith in his youth and led a wild life. He lived with a Carthaginian woman from the age of 15 through 30, and he fathered a son whom he named Adeotadus, which means the gift of God. Augustine had gone to Carthage to study law, but, he became a slave to immorality and eventually embraced the heresy of Manichaeism.
He went to Italy around 383, and taught rhetoric at Milan. He was a Manichaean for several years after having investigated and experimented with several philosophies. Manichaeism 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 book, “Confessions”: "God, give me chastity and continence - but not just now." This heresy boasted to have an answer to every question and to explain the deepest mysteries of the Christian religion. It was this boast that blinded Saint Augustine for nine years, setting him thinking that Manichaeism "would free us from all error, and bring us to God by pure reason alone." Association with the leaders of this heresy opened his eyes and he saw that, despite the boast of their lips, "their hearts were void of truth." His mother, Saint Monica prayed constantly for his conversion to the truth. His conversion is a classic instance of the efficacy of a mother's prayer. Saint Augustine was baptized by Saint Ambrose of Milan around 387.
On the death of his mother he returned to Tagaste in 388, sold his property, gave the proceeds to the poor, and founded a monastery. Saint Augustine was ordained a priest around 391, and was consecrated assistant Bishop of Hippo around 396. He introduced religious poverty and community life into his residence, which became a nursery of African monasteries and bishops.
For 34 years he wrote and preached against the heresies of Manichaeism, Donatism, Pelagianism and others. He oversaw his church and his see during the fall of the Roman Empire to the Vandals. Augustine became renowned as a philosopher, theologian, and especially as the Doctor of Grace. His writings cover the whole field of theology, with his “Confessions” and the “City of God” being the best known. Saint Augustine is a Latin Father of the Church, and Doctor of the Church.
Saint Augustine's later thinking is best said by his writing, “Our hearts were made for You, O Lord, and they are restless until they rest in you.”
Saint Augustine's later thinking is best said by his writing, “Our hearts were made for You, O Lord, and they are restless until they rest in you.”
Saint Augustine died at Hippo around 430. His relics are at Pavia and Hippo. His memorial is August 28.
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Below is a prayer by Saint Augustine :
Prayer on Finding God after a Long Search
Too late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient, O Beauty so new. Too late have I loved you! You were within me but I was outside myself, and there I sought you! In my weakness I ran after the beauty of the things you have made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The things you have made kept me from you - the things which would have no being unless they existed in you! You have called, you have cried, and you have pierced my deafness. You have radiated forth, you have shined out brightly, and you have dispelled my blindness. You have sent forth your fragrance, and I have breathed it in, and I long for you. I have tasted you, and I hunger and thirst for you. You have touched me, and I ardently desire your peace. Amen
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Below are several quotations from Saint Augustine of Hippo:
God has no need of your money, but the poor have. You give it to the poor, and God receives it. - Saint Augustine
The honors of this world, what are they but puff, and emptiness and peril of falling? - 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
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
