archives

It is August once more, and for us Augustinians, the month reminds us of Augustine of Hippo. I visited the website of the Order yesterday hoping to find any new materials about Augustine or the Order's spirituality and found this news item about the discovery in Erfurt of six previously unheard of sermons of Augustine. The news report is syndicated from the Tablet dated 5 April 2008 and authored by a certain Christa Pongratz-Lippit. She describes how these manuscripts have come to Erfurt thus

The following is lifted from Augustine’s Confessions as presented in a Logos Software acknowledged at the end of the page.  I have annotated it so that it would be easier to read.  The subject of this page is Monica herself, Augustine’s mom.  We know her generally as the mother who suffered on account of her son.  But that is only a part of the picture.  She also had to bear being the wife of a husband who was both unfaithful and violent.  Augustine praises her for having lived with his father Patricius without having her face bashed in like the battered wives in their neighborhood who dared question their husbands’ virtues.  But I wouldn’t expect the woman of our times to accept Monica’s strategy.  Submissiveness, specially to husbands, is not considered a virtue nowadays.  Augustine also writes about his mother’s ways towards her mother-in-law and her attitude towards the neighborhood gossips.  In the end, Monica won her husband to the Church and her own wayward son.

Someone has called him "The First Modern Man." Both Catholics and Non-Catholic Mainline Churches claim him as their own. Eastern Catholics number him among their "fathers" prompting a scholar to suggest that he be named "Common Father of the East and West." Descartes was flattered when he was told that his "Cogito ergo sum" echoes this man's "Dubito ergo sum."

I am referring to Augustine of Hippo (354-430). And this is a short retelling of his life: