Today is the Feast of St. Augustine, one of the most important theologians of the early Church.  He was born in the middle of the 4^th Century in North Africa, in what is now Algeria.  At that time, all of North Africa and the Middle East was Christian.  Islam would not exist for another 200 years.  But it was also a time of great social turmoil.  The Church had finally become the official religion of the Roman Empire, but the Empire would begin to fall apart in Augustine’s lifetime.  The Emperor had already left Rome and moved to Constantinople, now known as Istanbul.  In the year 410, the barbarian tribe called the Visigoths had captured and destroyed Rome.  The fall of Rome shocked the Christian world and many seriously thought the world was going to end.  The times of Augustine were very much like our own.

Augustine was born to a Christian mother, St. Monica.  Her husband refused to allow Augustine to be baptized.  It was in any case a time when many people did not get baptized until adulthood.  The thinking was-and it was wrong- that if you waited until late in life, then you could live without restraint, sin greatly and have it all washed away before you died.

Augustine himself lived a very immoral life when he was a teenager and a young adult.  It was a great source of pain for his mother and later Augustine would regret his youthful excesses.  He wrote about his early life in a book called The Confessions, among the most influential books ever written.

He never went to a formal school and was basically self-taught.  He was brilliant and was a great orator.  It is said he could bring an entire city to tears with one speech.

When he was 31 years old `and living in Milan, in northern Italy, one day he heard a child’s voice repeating over and over again in Latin, “Tolle lege, tolle lege, tolle lege.”  It means to “take and read”.  The nearest book was the Bible, he opened it to St Paul’s letter to the Romans and the 13^th chapter.  I don’t recommend this type of practice, but it did change Augustine’s life.  In that chapter, St Paul says that “the night is long past and it’s time to live in the light.”  Shortly thereafter, he was baptized, became a priest, and was later elected Bishop of Hippo, also in North Africa.

Another story shows Augustine’s constant, life-long struggle with trying to rationally understand theology.  One day he was walking along the beach and was trying to figure out the Trinity: how could one God be three persons?  He saw a child on the beach who had dug a hole in the sand, running down to the water with a shell and running back to fill the hole with water.  He did this over and over until Augustine asked him what he was doing.  The child said he was emptying the ocean into the hole.  Augustine said, “You can’t do that.”  The child replied, “Neither can you figure out the Trinity.”

Augustine’s theology is important, but some of it does not fit modern understanding.  His opinion of women, for example, is simply wrong.

Nevertheless, he shows us that we can always turn our lives around.  He had a great influence, especially on what can be called the “I once was lost, but now I’m found” ideology. It’s a lot easier for everyone not to get lost in the first place. Many people get lost and never find their way back.

I’ve only written 2.5 pages on Augustine, who wrote thousands of pages of theology.

I would recommend at some point, if you haven’t already read it, his autobiography The Confessions.

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