St Augustine recognized the presence not only of ‘hidden saints’ but also ‘prophets’ among the Gentiles

"...Balaam, a Mesopotamian diviner, was somewhat unfairly vilified in the NT. In the full story about him (Num. 22:1-24: 25), he clearly exemplifies how an ‘outsider’, who never joins the people of God, can pronounce genuine prophecies about the destiny of Israel, its royal leader, and Jesus himself. Could we imagine such prophetic activity continuing today among those who do not belong to the Church?

One might readily think here of ‘positive’ figures such as Martin Buber (1879 – 1965), Mahatma Gandhi (1869 – 1948), and the Dalai Lama (b. 1936). But what of such notoriously ‘negative’ figures as Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939), Karl Marx (1818 – 83), and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900). Marold Westphal entertained the possibility in his Suspicion and Faith: The Religious Use of Modern Atheism. Westphal explored brilliantly the abiding challenges that Freud, Marx and Nietzsche pose to believers, who slide into various forms of self-deception. Without changing anything, he might have given his book another subtitle: The Prophetic Use of Modern Atheism. What would it be like to take the case of Balaam as an encouragement to look for prophetic figures, both positive and negative, in the modern world? St Augustine of Hippo (354 – 430) recognized the presence not only of ‘hidden saints’ but also ‘prophets’ among the Gentiles (Contra Faustum 19.2; De catechizandis rudibus 22.40). He declared roundly that ‘prophecy was extended to all nations (omnibus gentibus dispensabatur prophetia)’ (In Ioanem 9.9)."

by Gerald O’Collins, S.J. Salvation For All: God’s Other Peoples (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 203-4. Taken from here

-Carlos J. Medina, OSA

Augustine on Jesus' Washing of the Feet

"He rises from supper, and lays aside His garments; and took a towel, and girded Himself. After that He pours water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel."

It is He, into whose hands the Father had given all things, who now washes, not the disciples' hands, but their feet: and it was just while knowing that He had come from God, and was proceeding to God, that He discharged the office of a servant, not of God the Lord, but of man.

Why should we wonder that He rose from supper, and laid aside His garments, who, being in the form of God, made Himself of no reputation? And why should we wonder, if He girded Himself with a towel, who took upon Him the form of a servant, and was found in the likeness of a man? Why wonder, if He poured water into a basin to wash His disciples' feet, who poured His blood upon the earth to wash away the filth of their sins? Why wonder, if with the towel wherewith He was girded He wiped the feet He had washed, who with the very flesh that clothed Him laid a firm pathway for the footsteps of His evangelists?

In order, indeed, to gird Himself with the towel, He laid aside the garments He wore; but when He emptied Himself [of His divine glory] in order to assume the form of a servant, He laid not down what He had, but assumed that which He had not before. When about to be crucified, He was indeed stripped of His garments, and when dead was wrapped in linen clothes: and all that suffering of His is our purification.

So great is the beneficence of human humility, that even the Divine Majesty was pleased to commend it by His own example; for proud man would have perished eternally, had he not been found by the lowly God. For the Son of man came to seek and to save the lost. And as man was lost by imitating the pride of the deceiver, may he now, when found, imitate the Redeemer's humility.


Tractate 55 on the Gospel of John

Posted by Carlos J. Medina

Augustine's Major Works - Part 3

Despite all his humility, Augustine must certainly have been aware of his own intellectual stature. Yet it was far more important to him to take the Christian message to the simple than to write lofty theological works. This deepest intention of his that guided his entire life appears in a letter written to his colleague Evodius, in which he informs him of his decision to suspend the dictation of the books of De Trinitate for the time being, "because they are too demanding and I think that few can understand them; it is therefore urgent to have more texts which we hope will be useful to many" (Epistulae 169, 1, 1). Thus, it served his purpose better to communicate the faith in a manner that all could understand rather than to write great theological works. The responsibility he felt acutely with regard to the popularization of the Christian message was later to become the origin of writings such as De Catechizandis Rudibus, a theory and also a method of catechesis, or the Psalmus contra Partem Donati. The Donatists were the great problem of St Augustine's Africa, a deliberately African schism. They said: true Christianity is African Christianity. They opposed Church unity. The great Bishop fought against this schism all his life, seeking to convince the Donatists that only in unity could "Africanness" also be true. And to make himself understood by the simple, who could not understand the difficult Latin of the rhetorician, he said: I must even write with grammatical errors, in a very simplified Latin. And he did so, especially in this Psalmus, a sort of simple poem against the Donatists, in order to help all the people understand that it is only through Church unity that our relationship with God may be truly fulfilled for all and that peace may grow in the world.

The mass of homilies that he would often deliver "off the cuff", transcribed by tachygraphers during his preaching and immediately circulated, had a special importance in this production destined for a wider public. The very beautiful Enarrationes in Psalmos, read widely in the Middle Ages, stand out among them. The practice of publishing Augustine's thousands of homilies - often without the author's control - precisely explains their dissemination and later dispersion but also their vitality. In fact, because of the author's fame, the Bishop of Hippo's sermons became very sought after texts and, adapted to ever new contexts, also served as models for other Bishops and priests.

A fresco in the Lateran that dates back to the fourth century shows that the iconographical tradition already depicted St Augustine with a book in his hand, suggesting, of course, his literary opus which had such a strong influence on the Christian mentality and Christian thought, but it also suggests his love for books and reading as well as his knowledge of the great culture of the past. At his death he left nothing, Possidius recounts, but "recommended that the library of the church with all the codes be kept carefully for future generations", especially those of his own works. In these, Possidius stresses, Augustine is "ever alive" and benefits his readers, although "I believe that those who were able to see and listen to him were able to draw greater benefit from being in touch with him when he himself was speaking in church, and especially those who experienced his daily life among the people" (Vita Augustini, 31). Yes, for us too it would have been beautiful to be able to hear him speaking. Nonetheless, he is truly alive in his writings and present in us, and so we too see the enduring vitality of the faith to which he devoted his entire life.

Benedict XVI, February 20, 2008

Augustine's Major Works - Part 2

De Civitate Dei - an impressive work crucial to the development of Western political thought and the Christian theology of history - was written between 413 and 426 in 22 books. The occasion was the sack of Rome by the Goths in 410. Numerous pagans still alive and also many Christians said: Rome has fallen; the Christian God and the Apostles can now no longer protect the city. While the pagan divinities were present, Rome was the caput mundi, the great capital, and no one could have imagined that it would fall into enemy hands. Now, with the Christian God, this great city no longer seemed safe. Therefore, the God of the Christians did not protect, he could not be the God to whom to entrust oneself. St Augustine answered this objection, which also touched Christian hearts profoundly, with this impressive work, De Civitate Dei, explaining what we should and should not expect of God, and what the relationship is between the political sphere and the sphere of faith, of the Church. This book is also today a source for defining clearly between true secularism and the Church's competence, the great true hope that the faith gives to us.

This important book presents the history of humanity governed by divine Providence but currently divided by two loves. This is the fundamental plan, its interpretation of history, which is the struggle between two loves: love of self, "to the point of indifference to God", and love of God, "to the point of indifference to the self" (De Civitate Dei XIV, 28), to full freedom from the self for others in the light of God. This, therefore, is perhaps St Augustine's greatest book and is of lasting importance. Equally important is the De Trinitate, a work in 15 books on the central core of the Christian faith, faith in the Trinitarian God. It was written in two phases: the first 12 books between 399 and 412, published without the knowledge of Augustine, who in about 420 completed and revised the entire work. Here he reflects on the Face of God and seeks to understand this mystery of God who is unique, the one Creator of the world, of us all, and yet this one God is precisely Trinitarian, a circle of love. He seeks to understand the unfathomable mystery: the actual Trinitarian being, in three Persons, is the most real and profound unity of the one God. De Doctrina Christiana is instead a true and proper cultural introduction to the interpretation of the Bible and ultimately of Christianity itself, which had a crucial importance in the formation of Western culture.

Benedict XVI, February 20, 2008

Posted By Carlos J. Medina

Prayers from the Confessions - Book 1

How should the God who made heaven and earth come into me? What am I to you that you should command me to love you?

For in truth, all good things are from you, O God. From you derives all manner of being, all existence, O God most beautiful, who endow all things with their beautiful form and by your governance direct them in their due order.

My faith calls calls upon you, Lord, this faith which is your gift to me, which you have breathed into me through the humanity of your Son, and the ministry of one of your preachers.

The house of my soul is too small for you to enter: make it more spacious by your coming.

O Lord my God, tell me what you are to me. Say to my soul, I am your salvation. Say it so that I can hear it. My heart is listening, Lord; open the ears of my heart and say to my soul, "I am your salvation". Let me run toward this voice and seize hold of you. Do not hide your face from me: let me die so that I may see it, for not to see it would be death to me indeed.

To whom but yourself can I cry, Cleanse me of my hidden sins, O Lord, and for those incurred through others pardon your servant?

Great are you, O Lord, and exceedingly worthy of praise; your power is immense, and your wisdom beyond reckoning. And so we humans, who are part of your creation, long to praise you -we, who carry our mortality about with us, carry the evidence of our sin, and with it the proof that you thwart the proud.

Hear my prayer, Lord. Let not my soul faint under your discipline, nor let me weary as I confess before you those acts of mercy by which you plucked me from all my evil ways. I long for you to grow sweeter to me than all those allurements I was pursuing. You have enabled me to love you with all my strength, and with passionate yearning grasp your hand, so that you may rescue me from every temptation until my life's end.

Translated by Maria Boulding, OSB

Posted by Carlos J. Medina

Enkindling our Desire for God

In the letter to Proba St Augustine gives us several guidelines in regards to prayer. He writes that our desire for God is important for the life of our prayer, and he believes that our desire must be insistent:

"Therefore we pray always with insistent desire, in that same faith and hope and charity."

And yet, he warns that our prayer must not come solely when we desire, but rather we must have a fixed schedule:

"But, we also pray to God in words at certain fixed hours and times"

The reason he gives us is, "so that we may urge ourselves on and take note with ourselves how much progress we have made in this desire, and may rouse ourselves more earnestly to increase it."

He adds to the explanation: "because that desire [for union with God] grows somewhat lukewarm by reason of our cares and preoccupation with other things, we call our mind back to the duty of praying at fixed hours. In this way, we urge ourselves in the words of our prayer to press forward to what we desire; otherwise, after our desire has begun to grow lukewarm, it then becomes entirely cold, and is completely extinguished, unless it is frequently rekindled."

And as our desire is enkindled by our fixed prayer we come to pray

"even in the necessary works and obligations."

Posted by Carlos J. Medina

St. Augustine on Sacrifice

"A true sacrifice is every work which is done that we may be united to God in holy fellowship, and which has a reference to that supreme good and end in which alone we can be truly blessed. And therefore even the mercy we show to men, if it is not shown for God's sake, is not a sacrifice."

"[Each person], consecrated in the name of God, and vowed to God, is a sacrifice in so far as he dies to the world that he may live to God."

"Exhorting to this sacrifice, the apostle says, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service (Romans 12:1). If, then, the body, which, being inferior, the soul uses as a servant or instrument, is a sacrifice when it is used rightly, and with reference to God, how much more does the soul itself become a sacrifice when it offers itself to God, in order that, being inflamed by the fire of His love, it may receive of His beauty and become pleasing to Him?"

"The whole redeemed city, that is to say, the congregation or community of the saints, is offered to God as our sacrifice through the great High Priest, who offered Himself to God in His passion for us, that we might be members of this glorious head, according to the form of a servant."

"Accordingly, the apostle had exhorted us to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, our reasonable service, and not to be conformed to the world, but to be transformed in the renewing of our mind, that we might prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God, that is to say, the true sacrifice of ourselves."

"As we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another, having gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us (Romans 12:3-6). This is the sacrifice of Christians: we, being many, are one body in Christ. And this also is the sacrifice which the Church continually celebrates in the sacrament of the altar, known to the faithful, in which she teaches that she herself is offered in the offering she makes to God."

St. Augustine City of God Book 10, Ch 6

Posted by Carlos J. Medina

Augustine Day by Day

You reach God by humilty

In ordinary visible situations, in order to reach places high up, you stretch yourself up to your full height. God however, though he is the most sublimely up of all things, is not reached by hoisting oneself up, but by humbling oneself.

St. Augustine, Sermon 351, 1
Found in Augustine Day by Day II by John E. Rotelle, OSA

Posted by Carlos J. Medina

Happy St. Augustine Day!

Holy Founder, wisest preacher
Still be with us as our teacher
Guide our feet on Wisdom's quest.
Restless mind, by Wisdom captured,
Soaring spirit, love-enraptured,
Lead us where our hearts find rest.

"The brothers devoted themselves to the apostles' instruction and communal life, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. A reverent fear overtook them all, for many wonders and signs were performed by the apostles. The shared all things in common; they would sell their property and goods, dividing everything on the basis of each one's need. They went to the temple area together while in their homes they broke bread. With exultant and sincere hearts they took their meals in common, praising God and winning the approval of all the people." Acts 2, 42-47

After his conversion St. Augustine sought to live a monastic life, among friends, based on the account from Acts of the Apostles. The Church needed him as priest and bishop, so he was only a monk for a short time. Yet, even as a bishop he lived in community sharing goods, prayers, and meals. He wrote a rule of life for religious communities based on this charism of common life focused on God.

"...I charge you to preach the word, to stay with this task whether convenient or inconvenient -correcting, reproving, appealing -constantly teaching and never losing patience. For the time will come people will not tolerate sound doctrine, but, following their own desires, will surround themselves with teachers who tickle their ears." From St. Paul's letter to Timothy

St. Augustine is a great example of someone who stayed with his task to preach and teach in convenient and inconvenient circumstances. When the Vandals were invading North Africa, Augustine could have fled, but he decided to stay with his people.

Readings are taken from today's readings according to the Augustinian Missal

Posted by Carlos J. Medina

A Few Words On Grace

If grace is lacking, the law is there simply to make culprits and to slay. For this reason, the apostle said, "the latter kills, the former gives life" (2 Cor 3, 6).

The desire for God's help in doing good is itself the beginning of grace.

It must be admitted that we have a will free to do both evil and good. However, in doing evil, one is free of justice and the slave of sin, and in doing good, no one is free unless he is freed by the Lord. Therefore one must say with the psalmist, "be my helper, do not forsake me" (Ps 26), for without him we can do nothing (Jn 15, 5).

From Admonition and Grace by St. Augustine

Posted by Carlos J. Medina, Novice

Caritas in Veritate

The Holy Father has finally published his much awaited encyclical Caritas in Veritate.

He refers to St. Augustine in this paragraph:

"As I said in my Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi, history is thereby deprived of Christian hope, deprived of a powerful social resource at the service of integral human development, sought in freedom and in justice. Hope encourages reason and gives it the strength to direct the will. It is already present in faith, indeed it is called forth by faith. Charity in truth feeds on hope and, at the same time, manifests it. As the absolutely gratuitous gift of God, hope bursts into our lives as something not due to us, something that transcends every law of justice. Gift by its nature goes beyond merit, its rule is that of superabundance. It takes first place in our souls as a sign of God's presence in us, a sign of what he expects from us. Truth — which is itself gift, in the same way as charity — is greater than we are, as Saint Augustine teaches."

Posted by Carlos J. Medina

Unanswered Prayer

Carlos J. Medina

Eternal Life and Temporality

Carlos J. Medina

Thoughts and Reflections by St. Augustine

St. Augustine and the Augustinians

St. Augustine of Hippo was born in 354 A.D. in the country that is now Algeria. He had a restless and troubled early life. He searched for truth and happiness, but could not find them. After his conversion (387 A.D.) he set aside his promising career in the world and decided to serve God together with his friends. He returned to North Africa where he and his friends lived a community life based on the example of the early Church as recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. As the ideals of Augustine's community became better known, this way of life produced many brothers to serve the Church.

The foundation of Augustinian life is brothers living common life together united in charity. By God's grace, they strive to serve one another and to grow in appreciating the values of the human person. Augustinians work with all their energy for the benefit of the community, possess nothing as their own but live for the common good.

The purpose of the Order consists in this: that together, with one heart in brotherhood and spiritual friendship, the members seek and worship God. They labor in the service of the people of God. As the rule of St. Augustine states, "This is the primary reason why we have come together, that we may live in harmony and be of one mind and heart, intent upon God." This unity of hearts is made possible through an intimate union with Christ in His body which is the Church.

In this blog you will find events in the life of an Augustinian friar, preaching, events of our province, and more! If you are drawn by our Augustinian ideal and feel that God may be calling you to share our life, then we urge you to take His invitation very seriously.