Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - After the Christmas festivities, the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI resumed his reflections on the Church Fathers during his Wednesday general audience on January 9: “The greatest Father of the Latin Church, Saint Augustine: a man of passion and faith, of keen intelligence and tireless pastoral concern” who “left a profound mark on the cultural life of the West and of the whole world, Augustine is also the Church Father who left the greatest number of works”.
The Pope devoted his catechesis to the life of Augustine which can be reconstructed from his writings, especially the Confessions, “an extraordinary spiritual autobiography, written to give praise to God, which is his most famous work”. Augustine was born in Tagaste - in the province of Numidia, in Roman Africa - 13 November 354 to Patricius, a pagan who became a catechumen, and Monica, fervent Christian woman. Augustine “says he also loved Jesus but he distanced himself from ecclesial faith, from ecclesial practice, as do many young people even today” the Holy Father recalled. Augustine had a brother, Navigio, and a sister, whose name we do not know.
Keenly intelligent, although not always a model student, Augustine studied at Madaura and Carthage, “becoming fluent in the Latin language”. In Carthage for the first time he read Hortensius, a work by Cicerone which was later lost, which is set at the beginning of his journey of conversion. In fact afterwards he began immediately to read the Bible, which at first disappointed him. “He fell into the net of the Manicheans, who presented themselves as Christians and promised a totally rational religion - said Pope Benedict XVI -. He became a Manichean, convinced that he had found the synthesis between rationality, the quest for the truth and love of Jesus Christ”.
Augustine returned to Carthage, “where he became a brilliant and famous teacher of rhetoric”, however as time passed, “he began to drift away from the faith of the Manicheans, who disappointed him precisely from the intellectual point of view since they were unable to solve his doubts, and he went to Rome, and then to Milan, where the imperial court resided and where he had won a post of prestige”. He Augustine became accustomed to listening to the homilies Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, “initially to increase his knowledge of rhetoric”, and the contents “touched his heart increasingly ”: he understood “that the entire Old Testament was a journey towards Jesus Christ. So he found the key to understanding the beauty and depth, also philosophical, of the Old Testament and understood the unity of Christ's mystery in history and also the synthesis between philosophy, rationality and faith in Logos, in Christ the eternal Word made flesh … his conversion to Christianity, on 15 August 386, was the culmination of a long and tormented interior journey”. Augustine was baptised by Ambrose on 24 April 387, during the Easter Vigil in the Cathedral of Milan. He decided to return immediately to Africa. While he was in Ostia with a group of fiends waiting to set sail for Africa, where he intended to live a monastic, community life, at the service of God, his mother Monica fell ill and died, causing Augustine heartrending grief. Having settled in Hippo, with the intention of founding a monastery there, Augustine was ordained a priest 391 and with some companions began a monastic life. Later he realised that God was calling him to be a shepherd to others, and so to offer the gift of truth to others. In Hippo he was consecrated Bishop in 395.
“While continuing to study the Scriptures and texts of Christian tradition, Augustine was an exemplary Bishop in his tireless pastoral commitment-Pope Benedict XVI recalled -: preaching several times a week to his people, assisting the poor and orphans, caring for the formation of the clergy and the organisation of monasteries and convents”. Most active in the government of his diocese for more than thirty five years, the Bishop of Hippo exercised “a vast influence on the leadership of the Catholic Church in Roman Africa and more in general on Christianity of his day, standing up to tenacious and disruptive religious tendencies and heresies such as Manichaeism, Donatism and Pelagianism, which threatened Christian faith in God one and rich in mercy ”. He died on 28 August 430, entrusting himself to God, struck by a fever while Hippo was besieged by invading vandals. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 10/1/2008; righe 50, parole 741)
