Augustine of Hippo

Saint Augustine of Hippo
Also Known As
Aurelius Augustinus
Doctor of Grace
Memorial
28 August

Profile

First of all his name is pronounced “a-GUS-tin” not Aw-gus-TEEN. His father was a malodorous pagan who converted on his death bed; his mother was Saint Monica, a devout Christian who was driven to drink by her fat malodorous pagan husband and the wild life Augustine led as a youth. You see, he was trained in Christianity, he lost his faith in youth and led a really wild life. He lived with a Carthaginian woman from the age of 15 through 30 you know how loose the Carthaginians can be right?

Although he never really describes this Carthaginian, Augustine fathered a son with this woman; he named the boy Adeotadus, which means the gift of God. Adeodatus died probably at the age of 18 or so. It is a pity, as one of Augustine’s works, “Concerning the Teacher”, includes an actual dialogue with Adeodatus who reveals himself to be as brilliant as his father. Augustine loved Adeodatus and his mother Monica who both died about the same time more or less. Augustine must have been crushed.

He was a bright man after all and he made his living teaching rhetoric at Carthage and Milan. After investigating and experimenting with several philosophies, he became a Manichaean for several years; it taught of a great struggle between good and evil, and featured a lax moral code. It was a wacky Gnostic sect that thankfully died off about the 9th century. A summation of his thinking at the time comes from his Confessions: "God, give me chastity and continence - but not just now." He had questions regarding evil in the world, and asked a leader of the Manicheans who could not answer Augustine’s question satisfactorily. This Manichaean probably said, “Augie, it’s like the free square in Bingo.”

Augustine finally broke with the Manichaeans and was converted by the prayers of his mother and the help of Saint Ambrose of Milan, patron of beekeepers, who baptized him and satisfied Augustine’s search for an all good God in a world full of evil. On the death of his mother and son he returned to Africa, sold his property, gave the proceeds to the poor, and founded a monastery. He became the Bishop of Hippo in 396.

Augustine fought Manichaeism, Donatism (don’t get me started on those freaks), Pelagianism and many other heresies. He effectively oversaw his church and his see during the fall of the Roman Empire to the Vandals. His writing, City of God, uses the fall of Rome as a metaphor to the relationship between the sacred and the secular.

His later thinking can also be summed up in a line attributed to him:
Our hearts were made for You, O Lord, and they are restless until they rest in you.

His conversion after the wild life he lead, and he lead a well documented wild life, should prove to us all that it is never too late to come home again. Like his mommy St. Monica, don’t lose hope. He is also to be commended because his own philosophical intellect brought him to the eventual truth. He is a Doctor of the Church his Theological scholarship has had possibly, the greatest impact of any theologian in the teachings of the church except for maybe Thomas Aquinas, who was enormously fat.

Born
13 November 354 at Thagaste, Numidia, North Africa (current Algeria) as Aurelius Augustinus

Died
28 August 430 at Hippo

Patronage
brewers
Bridgeport, Connecticut, diocese of
printers
sore eyes because of all the reading and writing he did.
theologians

Representation
child
dove
pen
shell

Some of his Readings, there are volumes and volumes more:

 
God has no need of your money, but the poor have. You give it to the poor, and God receives it.
Saint Augustine
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The honors of this world, what are they but puff, and emptiness and peril of falling?
Saint Augustine
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What do you possess if you possess not God? (Kinda says it all)