Feast day: August 28

St. Augustine of Hippo

Bishop & Doctor of the Church · 354–430

Patron of Theologians, printers, brewers

Restless genius who chased pleasure and philosophy for 30 years before his dramatic conversion; his Confessions invented the spiritual autobiography.

Augustine was born in 354 at Tagaste in Roman North Africa, to a pagan father and a devout Christian mother, St. Monica, whose prayers and tears for her brilliant, wayward son would become almost as famous as he. Gifted and ambitious, he won fame as a teacher of rhetoric at Carthage, Rome, and Milan, took a mistress with whom he had a son, and for years followed the Manichean sect, restlessly searching for truth while resisting the claims of the faith.

His long inner struggle, which he later recounted in the 'Confessions,' came to a head in a Milan garden, where, hearing a child's voice chant 'Take up and read,' he opened the letters of St. Paul and found his heart at last surrendered. He was baptized by St. Ambrose in 387; Monica, her life's prayer answered, died soon after as they journeyed home.

Returning to Africa, Augustine was ordained almost against his will and made bishop of Hippo, which he served for some thirty-five years. From that small see he became the towering theologian of the Western Church, defending the faith against the Manicheans, Donatists, and Pelagians, and writing on grace, the Trinity, the Church, and the soul with a depth that shaped Christian thought for a thousand years and more.

His 'Confessions' — the first true autobiography — and his vast 'City of God,' written as the Roman world fell apart around him, remain among the most read books in all literature. He died in 430 as the Vandals besieged his city, and is honored as a Father and Doctor of the Church, the 'Doctor of Grace.'

His honest prayer from his wild years: 'Lord, make me chaste — but not yet.' Few saints have documented their flaws so thoroughly.

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
— St. Augustine of Hippo

Image: Philippe de Champaigne (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/02084a.htm