Augustine the Saint
It has long been a commonplace among commentators of the Confessions that the first nine books are about Augustine’s ardent search for truth, leaving reflections on its meaning for the remaining four books. In other words, now that he’s determined to cleave to Christ, to commune with Him in the most intimate way in the life of the Church, certain implications follow which Augustine is only too eager to flesh out over the course of the final number of books.
Putting it another way, one could say that while the first nine tell the story of his conversion, including the major bumps along the way, the last four focus on various applications thereof. For instance, the use of memory (Book X); the problem of time (Book XI); unpacking Genesis (Book XII); further exposition of Genesis (Book XIII).
Meanwhile, with Book IX what we have is a description of everything that has happened to Augustine since his conversion. These are the events of real and compelling importance which transpired in the immediate period following his dramatic turn to God, to Jesus Christ, and to the Church He founded, of which there are several worth taking a look at.
Two of them, by the way, happen almost at once, beginning with Augustine’s resignation as a teacher of Rhetoric, followed by his retirement to the country for a life of prayer and study. Concerning the first, his professorial post, he writes to the people of Milan, “notifying them that they must find another vender of words for their students.” And then, as always, he acknowledges before God: “The deed was done, and you rescued my tongue, as you had already rescued my heart.”
At the same time, he and a handful of others elect to leave the public life altogether, sequestering themselves outside Milan for a more single-minded pursuit of the contemplative life. “Once we were there,” he tells God, “I began at last to serve you with my pen.” Which he proceeds to do, drawing upon a number of the psalms for nourishment and inspiration. “How I cried out to you, my God, when I read the Psalms of David, those hymns of faith, those songs of a pious heart in which the spirit of pride can find no place!”
“How they set me on fire with love of you!” he continues, very much in the same rhapsodic vein. “I was burning to echo them to all the world, if only I could, so that they might vanquish man’s pride.” He reads on, quoting from Psalm 4: “Tremble and sin no more,” which, he tells God, moves him deeply, “because now I had learnt to tremble for my past, so that in future I might sin no more. And it was right that I should tremble,” he adds, recalling years spent inoculated against the truth of God and His creation because it was not some other nature belonging to the tribe of darkness that had sinned in me, as the Manichees pretend. They do not tremble, but “they store up retribution for themselves against the day of retribution, when God will reveal the justice of His judgments.”
Yes, the love of God ignites no end of fire in Augustine’s heart. And yet, at the same time, it leaves him little possibility of spreading that fire to others. All those “dead corpses,” he calls them, of whom I had myself been one. For I had been evil as the plague. Like a cur I had snarled blindly and bitterly against the Scriptures, which are sweet with the honey of heaven and radiant with your light. And now I was sick at heart over the rebellion of those who hate them. (citing Psalm 138)
He will soon need the grace of baptism to heal his heart, which is another of those salient events that follow his conversion. And when at last it comes, it fills him with a certitude of joy he had never felt before. “All anxiety over the past melted away,” he reports, for I was lost in wonder and joy, meditating upon your far-reaching providence for the salvation of the human race…The music surged in my ears, truth seeped into my heart, and my feelings of devotion overflowed, so that the tears streamed down. But they were tears of gladness.
Soon thereafter, Augustine, along with Monica, his mother, and several others, leave Milan for the long journey home, stopping at Ostia, at the mouth of the Tiber, along the way. It is there that Monica will die, an event on which Augustine will dilate for the balance of Book IX, omitting not a word, he says, “that my mind can bring to birth concerning your servant, my mother. In the flesh she brought me to birth in this world: in her heart she brought me to birth in your eternal light.”
Clearly, after God, it is to Monica his mother that Augustine owes everything. And he heaps upon every memory he has of her, of the great goodness of her life and example, all possible praise. Including the fact that in the days before her death, having at last seen her prayers answered, and thus nothing more remains to be done before taking leave of this world, she tells him that she no longer wishes her body to be returned to Africa for burial in her native soil, despite an earlier and oft-repeated anxiety that she lie alongside her husband in the grave she had prepared for herself.
“You will bury your mother here,” she tells him. “It does not matter where you bury my body. Do not let that worry you! All I ask of you is that, wherever you may be, you should remember me at the altar of the Lord.”
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