#confessionsstaugustine

Thought for the Day – 14 February – The Memorial of St Valentine (176-273) Martyr

SATISFYING OUR RESTLESS HEARTS by Fr Steve Grunow

“And what is this God?   I asked the earth and it answered: ‘I am not God and all the things in the earth made the same confession.’   I asked the sea and the deeps and creeping things and they answered:   ‘We are not your God, seek higher.’   I asked the winds that blow and the whole air with all that is in it and the wind answered: ‘  I am not God.’   I asked the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars and they answered:   ‘Neither are we God whom you seek.’   So I asked all those things that entice the senses:   ‘Tell me then of this Mysterious One that I search for.’   And all cried out to me in one great voice: ‘God made us and God made you…’”

“So I set about to find God and found that I could not find Him until I embraced the mediator between God and man, Christ Jesus, who is all over all these things, who was calling me and saying: ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life…’”

These marvellous words belong to St Augustine….

St Augustine is one of the most renowned and influential saints of the Church, though his early life did not foreshadow such an identity and mission.   He lived much of his young life in resistance to God’s will and purposes.   Preoccupied with his body, he sought satisfaction in sex.   Preoccupied with power, he sought to ingratiate himself with the mighty.   Preoccupied with status, he sought self-promotion.   Preoccupied with wealth, he tried to sell himself to a career.

And none of these things, for all their allure and all their promises, brought him satisfaction.

As a result, Augustine embraced the prevailing esoteric and arcane “spiritualities” of his day.   He followed strange gods in an attempt to shake his alarming sense of dissatisfaction.   This left him emptier and even more diminished.

But a reckoning came that changed Augustine forever.

“I found myself weeping in the bitter sorrow of my heart.   And suddenly I heard a voice from a nearby house, a child’s voice, boy or girl I do not know – but it was sort of a sing song that repeated over and over again.   ‘Take and read, take and read.’   Wiping away my tears I took this as a divine command and opened the scriptures and in silence read the passage on which my eyes first fell – ‘Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in debauchery and impurity, not in contention and envy but put on the Lord Jesus…’”

So this is what Augustine did- he discarded the skin of his old self and put on the Lord Jesus.   And what God did with Augustine was remarkable.   He became a leader in the Faith, as a teacher, priest and bishop.   His writings have directed the mind and soul of the Church for centuries.   His influence is with us still- in how we pray, how we worship, and in what we believe.

At the heart of the Gospel is the call to conversion in Christ.   There is no moment in our life when this call does not beckon toward us.   There is no time in our life we are exempt from the summons.   Conversion is the substance of the work of the spiritual life. Conversion in Christ is our privileged spiritual way.

Like Augustine, so many of us fall into the illusion that something other than God can satisfy us or give our lives purpose and meaning.   Like the young Augustine, we are captivated by self-deception that directs us away from the one who is absolutely necessary – Christ.   In response to all the futility of our refusals, the wisdom of St Augustine rings true:

“You have made us for yourself and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

St Augustine, Pray for Us!

Thought for the day – 27 August – The Memorial of St Monica

Today we celebrate the memorial of St Monica, the mother of St Augustine, whose memorial we will celebrate tomorrow. We celebrate this memorial not simply because St Monica was the mother of a great saint.

The opening prayer for Mass goes like this and it is worthwhile to take note: ‘God of mercy, comfort of those in sorrow, the tears of St Monica moved you to convert her son, St Augustine to the faith of Christ.’ All in all, she prayed for something like 30 years before she finally had the joy of seeing St Augustine baptised.

St Monica enfleshed the words which we hear in the 1st reading: ‘May our Lord Jesus Christ and God our Father, who has given us His love and through His grace, such inexhaustible comfort and such sure hope, comfort you and strengthen you.’ The consolation, experienced by St Monica and her total abandonment to God can also be ours today when we persevere in patience and in trust – this is Monica’s lesson – keep on praying good folk, for God hears you!

St Monica, pray for us!

“The day was now approaching when my mother Monica would depart from this life;  You know that day, Lord, though we did not.   She and I happened to be standing by ourselves at a window that overlooked the garden in the courtyard of the house.   At the time we were in Ostia on the Tiber.   And so the two of us, all alone, were enjoying a very pleasant conversation, “forgetting the past and pushing on to what is ahead..”   We were asking one another in the presence of the Truth – for You are the Truth – what it would be like to share the eternal life enjoyed by the saints, which “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, which has not even entered into the heart of man.”   We desired with all our hearts to drink from the streams of your heavenly fountain, the fountain of life.   That was the substance of our talk, though not the exact words.   But You know, O Lord, that in the course of our conversation that day, the world and its pleasures lost all their attraction for us.   My mother said, “Son, as far as I am concerned, nothing in this life now gives me any pleasure. I do not know why I am still here, since I have no further hopes in this world. I did have one reason for wanting to live a little longer:  to see you become a Catholic Christian before I died. God has lavished His gifts on me in that respect, for I know that you have even renounced earthly happiness to be his servant.   So what am I doing here?”   I do not really remember how I answered her.    Shortly, within five days or thereabouts, she fell sick with a fever. Then one day during the course of her illness she became unconscious and for a while she was unaware of her surroundings.   My brother and I rushed to her side but she regained consciousness quickly.   She looked at us as we stood there and asked in a puzzled voice: “Where was I?”   We were overwhelmed with grief, but she held her gave steadily upon us, and spoke further:  “Here you shall bury your mother.”   I remained silent as I held back my tears.   However, my brother haltingly expressed his hope that she might not die in a strange country but in her own land, since her end would be happier there.   When she heard this, her face was filled with anxiety and she reproached him with a glance because he had entertained such earthly thoughts.   Then she looked at me and spoke:  “Look what he is saying.”   Thereupon she said to both of us, “Bury my body wherever you will; let not care of it cause you any concern.   One thing only I ask you, that you remember me at the altar of the Lord wherever you may be.”   Once our mother had expressed this desire as best she could, she fell silent as the pain of her illness increased.”  – from the Confessions of Saint Augustine