Saint Augustine in the Third Millennium

The great Saint Augustine, whose feast we celebrate today, remains one of the most "accessible" of the first millennium Fathers of the Church. This is all the more true given the fact that he has had a contemporary interpreter: none other than our previous Pope Benedict XVI.

In the five Wednesday General Audiences he devoted to Saint Augustine in January and February 2008, Pope Benedict presented an erudite summary of Augustine's vast work as well as some beautiful personal reflections on what he has learned from the great Latin Doctor.

Here are some words from Pope Benedict that struck me today:

"When I read St Augustine's writings, I do not get the impression that he is a man who died more or less 1,600 years ago; I feel he is like a man of today: a friend, a contemporary who speaks to me, who speaks to us with his fresh and timely faith. In St Augustine who talks to us, talks to me in his writings, we see the everlasting timeliness of his faith; of the faith that comes from Christ, the Eternal Incarnate Word, Son of God and Son of Man. And we can see that this faith is not of the past although it was preached yesterday; it is still timely today, for Christ is truly yesterday, today and for ever. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life. Thus, St Augustine encourages us to entrust ourselves to this ever-living Christ and in this way find the path of life" (Benedict XVI, General Audience 1/16/2008).

"Faith in Christ made him understand that God, apparently so distant, in reality was not that at all. He in fact made himself near to us, becoming one of us. In this sense, faith in Christ brought Augustine's long search on the journey to truth to completion. Only a God who made himself 'tangible,' one of us, was finally a God to whom he could pray, for whom and with whom he could live. This is the way to take with courage and at the same time with humility, open to a permanent purification which each of us always needs...

"Even today, as in his time, humanity needs to know and above all to live this fundamental reality: God is love, and the encounter with him is the only response to the restlessness of the human heart; a heart inhabited by hope, still perhaps obscure and unconscious in many of our contemporaries but which already today opens us Christians to the future...

"Saint Augustine defines prayer as the expression of desire and affirms that God responds by moving our hearts toward him. On our part we must purify our desires and our hopes to welcome the sweetness of God (cf. In I Ioannis 4, 6). Indeed, only this opening of ourselves to others saves us. Let us pray, therefore, that we can follow the example of this great convert every day of our lives, and in every moment of our life encounter the Lord Jesus, the only One who saves us, purifies us and gives us true joy, true life"

(Benedict XVI, General Audience 2/27/2008).

Some texts from Saint Augustine:

"Who shall bring me to rest in You? Who will send You into my heart so to overwhelm it that my sins shall be blotted out and I may embrace You, my only good?.... Behold, the ears of my heart are before You, O Lord; open them and say to my soul, 'I am your salvation'. I will hasten after that voice, and I will lay hold upon You. Hide not Your face from me" (Confessions, book I:5).

"You had shot at our heart with the arrow of Your love, and we bore Your words transfixed in our breast" (Confessions, book IX:3).

"Late have I loved You, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved You! You called, You shouted, and You broke through my deafness. You flashed, You shone, and You dispelled my blindness. You breathed Your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for You. I have tasted You, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for Your peace" (Confessions, book X:27).