Saint Augustine
Bishop of Hippo and Doctor of the Church
(354-430)
Saint
Augustine was born in 354 at Tagaste in Africa. He was brought up in
the Christian faith but did not receive baptism, result of the practice,
common in the first centuries, of deferring it until adulthood. An
ambitious schoolboy of brilliant talents and violent passions, he early
lost both his faith and his innocence. He pursued with ardor the study
of philosophy. He taught grammar, rhetoric and literature for nine years
in his native town of Tagaste, and in Carthage. He persisted in his
irregular life and doctrinal errors until he was thirty-two. Then one
day, stung to the heart by the account of some sudden conversions, he
cried out, The unlearned rise and storm heaven, and we, with all our
learning, for lack of courage lie inert! The great heart of this future
bishop was already evident.
When
as a genial student of rhetoric, he was at Milan, where Saint Ambrose
was bishop, Augustine tells us later in his autobiography, the Catholic
faith of his childhood regained possession of his intellect, but he
could not as yet resolve to break the chains of bad habit. His mother
helped him to separate from the mother of his son, Adeodatus, who had
died as a young man; and she, after this painful separation, retired for
life to a convent, regretting that she had long enchained this soul of
predilection. Augustine's mother, Saint Monica, died soon afterwards.
Urged
also by a friend who had decided to adopt a celibate life, Saint
Augustine took up a book of the Holy Scriptures, and read the Epistles
of Saint Paul in a new light. A long and terrible conflict ensued, but
with the help of grace the battle was won; he went to consult a priest
and received baptism, returned to Africa and gave all he had to the
poor. At Hippo, where he settled, he was consecrated bishop in 395. For
thirty-five years he was the center of ecclesiastical life in Africa,
and the Church's strongest champion against heresy. His writings, which
compose many volumes, have been everywhere accepted as a major source of
both Christian spirituality and theological speculation. The great
Doctor died, deeply regretted by the entire Christian world, in 430.
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