Augustinian Exercises

1.4 Integration

The life review in Confessions is a distinctive form of recollection that shows Augustine “in the act of reintegrating elements of his thought and life that had begun to come apart for him” (O’Donnell, 1992, I, xlvii). Through this process, Augustine binds experiences and events together into an overarching construction of meaning, with God as the ultimate referential value (Niño, 1997). The narrative takes on a reversible character as Augustine moves alternately from past to present: “What I was then …what I am now” (X, 4, 6); he creates a loop in which a specific event can be placed either before or after another because it does not take on its full significance until it is considered from the perspective of the whole journey (Doucet, 1987, p. 51). In this regard, Augustine’s exercise is guided by the conviction that one’s remembered self has not been forgotten by God (XIII, 1, 1). God is the Other, the ultimate relation that inhabits Augustine’s remembering (X, 24, 35). He looks back and finds signs, events, situations that point out God’s care for the individual and the whole creation. In this he attempts to gain some understanding of his place in God’s providential and redemptive plan.

From Augustine we learn that a person is constituted basically by the introspective stance of remembering and by relational modes in life. The many strands of experience that emerge from that core find expression in personal narrative, which is the essence of meaning-making and the therapeutic process (Kohut, 1982; McAdams, 1993).

Suggestion:

Read aloud and meditate on the following passages from Augustine's Confessions.

"Tell me of your compassion, O Lord my God, what what you ar to me. Say to my soul, I am your salvation. So speak that I may hear. Look, Lord, the ears of my heart are before you; open them, and say to my soul, I am your salvation. When I hear, may I run and lay hold on you. Hide not your face from me."

"LET me know You, Oh You who know me; let me know You, as I am known."

"Things of this life to be sorrowed for less, the more they are sorrowed for; and ought to be sorrowed for more, the less men do sorrow for them."

"And from You, Oh Lord, unto whose eyes the depths of one's conscience are naked, what in me could be hidden even if I were unwilling to confess to You ? For even if I hide You from myself, I cannot hide myself from You. But now, because I am dissatisfied with myself, You shine forth, and satisfy, and are beloved and desired. May I blush for myself, and renounce myself, and choose You, and may neither please You nor myself, except in You. To You, then, O Lord, am I manifest, as I am, and with what fruit I may confess to You I have spoken."

I, 1,1; 5,5; X, 1,1; 2, 2

Andrés G. Niño Ph.D., OSA

Posted by Carlos J. Medina