Who was Saint Augustine?
Saint Augustin, born on November 13, 354, was one of three children born to Patrice and Monique, small-scale farmers in Thagaste (today Souk Ahras, on the borders of Algeria and Tunisia). Augustin and his brother and sister enjoyed a happy childhood there. He disliked school and its brutality. But his intelligence quickly shone through, and his parents did everything they could to encourage his success, which they hoped would benefit them too. So he went on to excellent primary, secondary and finally university studies in Carthage, and soon became a professor of literature.
Her mother, the future Saint Monica, was a good Christian. His father, Patrice, on the other hand, was a pagan who had no objection to his mother’s Christian upbringing. As a baby, Augustin received the sacrament of the catechumens: the sign of the cross on the forehead, the grains of salt on the lips – what used to be called the “preliminary rites” of baptism. Later, around the age of seven, he fell seriously ill and, in danger of death, urgently asked to be baptized. But he recovered, and the ceremony was postponed. In those days, there were two categories of Christians: the “faithful”, who had received baptism and promised to live as Christians, and the “catechumens”, who preferred to stand comfortably on the threshold, telling themselves that there would always be time to do the necessary later.
Augustine was therefore always a Christian: he had drunk, he says in his Confessions, the name of his Saviour with his mother’s milk, and held it deep in his childlike heart. But it’s quite likely that he didn’t think much about it during the slightly crazy years of his adolescence.
Between wisdom and passion
At the age of 17-18, studying in Carthage, he married a woman who bore him a child. They named him Adéodat, “Dieudonné”. Adéodat was baptized at the age of 15, at the same time as his father, on the Easter night of 387. But he died prematurely at the age of 18.
Meanwhile, enthralled by a philosophical dialogue by Cicero, torn between his love of Wisdom (philosophy) and his passions as an ardent and ambitious young man, Augustine embarked on a long quest for Truth. He tried to read the Bible, but was put off by the bad Latin of old translations. He read every philosophical work he could find, seduced sometimes by skepticism, sometimes by Epicureanism. He was a seeker.
Manichaeism was an Eastern religion, founded by Mani, which professed a radical dualism: the opposition of Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, etc. This sect, which claimed to offer a rational explanation of the world, had a great influence on aristocratic circles in 4th-century North Africa. This sect, which claimed to offer a rational explanation of the world, had a great influence on aristocratic circles in 4th-century North Africa. After his conversion, in his Confessions and other works, Saint Augustine set out to combat Manichaeism both inside and outside the Church.
At the age of 29 (in 383), he left Carthage for Rome, then for Milan, the imperial residence, where he obtained a professorship. He became a civil servant: the pinnacle of his career! Young and ambitious, Augustine pursued honors, wealth and marriage. He wanted to become a provincial governor first, then a senator… His mother has joined him in Milan and is trying to find him a rich wife: you need money (already) to enter politics! Augustin resigned himself to repudiating the woman who had been his companion for sixteen years: he says it tore his heart…
Conversion and baptism
As soon as he arrived in Milan, Augustine paid a courtesy visit to the bishop, Ambrose, who received him paternally. He got into the habit of going to hear him on Sundays, at first to assess the orator’s talent. But his heart gradually opened to the truth of the discourse. He discovered the spiritual meaning of the Old Testament. This was a momentous event: Augustine could now feel at home in the Bible.
Reading the Platonic philosophers, who advised him to turn inward from the outside, in other words to “convert”, he entered himself, under God’s guidance, and discovered the pure spirituality of the soul and of God, its Creator.
But Augustine always wondered about Christ’s personality. He imagined him as a man of eminent wisdom, who, according to the Gospels, had eaten and drunk, slept and walked, rejoiced and mourned, conversed with his friends – in other words, had led a true human life. But he had no idea of the mystery of the “Word made flesh”, until Simplician, a great Christian intellectual, presented him with the Prologue to John’s Gospel as a compendium of Christian doctrine: Christ is both the Word, the Word of God in God, and the Word made flesh, the man Jesus Christ, Mediator of God and man. This was another important moment: Augustine discovered the coherence of Christian thought.
But he still had to bring his life into line with Christianity. It was not without difficulty! One day, he had a decisive crisis in the garden of his Milan residence. After a moment of great agitation, he sank down under a fig tree and let his tears flow freely. It was then that he heard a child’s voice crooning: “Take, read! take, read!” He grabbed the book of Paul’s letters, opened it at random and read, “No orgies and drinking, no bedbathing and debauchery, no strife and jealousy; but clothe yourselves in the Lord Jesus Christ; and do not worry about the flesh to satisfy its lusts” (Romans 13:13-14). This is enough to dispel the darkness of doubt.
At the end of the academic year, Augustine, his family and two young disciples retreated to a villa in the hills north of Milan, provided by a colleague. Here, they spent several peaceful months, engaging in philosophical discussions, personal meditation and prayer to the strains of the Psalms, which Augustine loved so much.
In March 387, they returned to Milan to register for baptism. Augustine, one of his friends and his son Adéodat followed Ambrose’s catechesis. On the Easter night of April 24-25, 387, like the others, Augustine was baptized by Ambrose in the baptismal pool.
Early retirement
Augustin had nothing more to do in Italy. He set off for home with his family. In autumn 387, they were in Ostia, awaiting embarkation for Africa. It was here that Augustine and Monica, leaning against a window, shared a moment of mystical bliss, the “ecstasy” or “contemplation” of Ostia. Five days later, Monique was taken ill with fever and died after nine days, at the age of fifty-six.
Back home in 388, Augustine and his companions settled in the family home at Thagaste. Back in North Africa, he founded a small contemplative community. He was called to the priesthood, then to the bishopric of Hippo. He continually fought against deviations from the Christian faith. He died in 430, during the siege of his city of Hippo by the Vandals. A Doctor of the Church, he is one of the four “Fathers of the Western Church”, along with Saint Ambrose, Saint Jerome and Gregory I.
P. Goulven Madec, Assumptionist, Augustinian Itineraries, no. 28 (July 2002)
Why is Augustin still important today?
According to Marcel Neusch, Assumptionist theologian (1935-2015), Augustine’s spirituality consists of nothing other than finding the truth about one’s own life and directing it towards its true good. And this quest for truth comprises seven elements:
- The driving force behind the quest for truth is desire, love;
- This quest follows an itinerary that goes from the outside in, from the lower (easy pleasures) to the higher (true self-realization);
- This quest is the work of grace. Man can take no credit for himself;
- But God also speaks from within, and it is faith that opens the door to His truth;
- This quest requires discernment, which is achieved through dialogue with experienced people;
- The community is the ideal place to verify our commitment to following Christ;
- The quest for truth must arouse apostolic urgency.
As for religious life, Augustine remains very important since many orders and congregations live under the authority of his rule:
- Order of Saint Augustine (OSA, Ordo Sancti Augustini)
- Ordre des Augustins déchaux, or simply Discalced Augustinians (OAD, Ordo Augustiniensium Discalceatorum): founded as a reform movement in the 16th century from the Order of St. Augustine, it was constituted as an independent Order in 1931.
- Ordre des Augustins Récollets, or simply Augustinian Recollects (OAR, Ordo Augustinianorum Recollectorum): also founded as a reform movement in the 16th century, it became an independent order in 1912.
- Various Congregations of apostolic life, with their own Constitutions but spiritually aggregated to the Augustinian Order, notably the Augustinians of the Assumption or Assumptionists aggregated on November 27, 1866 and renewed on March 25, 1929.