FEAST OF ST. AGUSTINE OF HIPPO
Revelation, Chapter 15, Verse 4
Who will not fear you, Lord, or glorify your name?
For you alone are holy. All the nations will come and worship before you, for
your righteous acts have been revealed.”
We glorify God when we are righteous as he is
righteous who makes the rain fall on both the good and the evil.
A righteous person, no matter how blameless, will
always take humanity’s failures personally. A righteous person has reverence for both God and those He created.
Reverence
is "a feeling
or attitude of deep respect tinged with awe; veneration". The
word "reverence" in the modern day is often used in relationship with
religion. This is because religion often stimulates the emotion through
recognition of God, the supernatural, and the ineffable. Reverence involves a
humbling of the self in respectful recognition of something perceived to be
greater than the self. Thus, religion is commonly a place where reverence is
felt. However, similar to awe, reverence is an emotion in its own right, and can
be felt outside of the realm of religion. Whereas awe may be characterized as an
overwhelming "sensitivity to greatness," reverence is seen more as
"acknowledging a subjective response to something excellent in a personal
(moral or spiritual) way, but qualitatively above oneself" Solomon describes awe as passive, but
reverence as active, noting that the feeling of awe (i.e., becoming awestruck)
implies paralysis, whereas feelings of reverence are associated more with
active engagement and responsibility toward that which one reveres. Nature, science, literature, philosophy, great
philosophers, leaders, artists, art, music, wisdom, and beauty may each act as
the stimulus and focus of reverence.[1]
St. Augustine (354-430) was born at Tagaste, Africa,
and died in Hippo. His father, Patricius, was a pagan; his mother, Monica, a
devout Christian. He received a good Christian education. As a law student in
Carthage, however, he gave himself to all kinds of excesses and finally joined
the Manichean sect. He then taught rhetoric at Milan where he was converted by
St. Ambrose. Returning to Tagaste, he distributed his goods to the poor, and
was ordained a priest. He was made bishop of Hippo at the age of 41 and became
a great luminary of the African Church, one of the four great founders of
religious orders, and a Doctor of the universal Church.
"Though I am but dust and ashes, suffer me to
utter my plea to Thy mercy; suffer me to speak, since it is to God's mercy that
I speak and not to man's scorn. From Thee too I might have scorn, but Thou wilt
return and have compassion on me. ... I only know that the gifts Thy mercy had
provided sustained me from the first moment. ... All my hope is naught save in
Thy great mercy. Grant what Thou dost command, and command what Thou wilt"
(St. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions,
6, 19).
As a young man, Augustine prepared for a
career as a teacher of Rhetoric and subsequently taught in Carthage and Rome.
Unfortunately, despite having a saint for a mother, as his career progressed he
wandered far from his Christian upbringing, and his life sank into an abyss of
pride and lust. Like many young pagan men of his time, he lived with a mistress
and conceived a child with her out of wedlock. However, the Lord did not want
to lose hold of this lost sheep altogether: thus, inspired by the writings of
the Roman philosopher Cicero (and, no doubt, prompted by the Holy Spirit),
Augustine began what would prove to be a lifelong search for wisdom. This
search took him first to the religious cult called the "Manichees," a
strange sect that believed the material world is the product of the powers of
"darkness," while the spiritual realm is the realm of
"light." After becoming disillusioned with the bizarre theories of
the Manichees, Augustine adopted the philosophy of the Neo-Platonists. This was
a school of philosophy centered on the writings of the ancient philosopher
Plotinus, who described the mystical journey that all people ought to undertake
as "the flight of the alone to the Alone," in other words, as a
mystical, solitary search for the ineffable Source of all things. In 386,
Augustine moved to Milan to a new teaching post, and there, by divine
providence, he encountered the preaching of the archbishop of the city, the
great theologian St. Ambrose. As a result of the example and preaching of this
great saint, as well as the prayers and tears of his saintly mother, Augustine
was quickly plunged into a profound inner struggle, wrestling with his sins of
the flesh and with temptations to intellectual pride. The turning point of this
struggle came in the summer of 386 when Augustine was sitting in a garden,
recollecting his past life and gazing into the depths of his own soul. He
describes what happened next in his autobiographical Confessions
(written in 397)[3]:
Such things I said, weeping in the most bitter sorrow
of my heart. And suddenly, I heard a voice from some nearby house, a boy's
voice or a girl's voice, I do not know: but it was a sort of sing-song repeated
again and again, "Take and read, take and read." I ceased weeping and
immediately began to search my mind most carefully as to whether children were
accustomed to chant these words in any kind of game, and I could not remember
that I had ever heard any such thing. Damming back the flood of my tears I
arose, interpreting the incident as quite certainly a divine command to open my
book of Scripture and read the passage at which I should open. ... I snatched
it up, opened it, and in silence read the passage upon which my eyes first
fell: "Not in rioting and
drunkenness, not in chambering and impurities, not in contention and envy, but
put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in its
concupiscences" (Rom 13:13). I had no wish to read further, and no
need. For in that instant, with the very ending of the sentence, it was as
though a light of utter confidence shone in my heart, and all the darkness of
uncertainty vanished away.
Then we [Augustine and his friend Alypius] went in to my mother and told her, to her great joy. We related how it had come about: she was filled with triumphant exultation and praised You who are mighty beyond what we ask or conceive: for she saw that You had given her more than with all her pitiful weeping she had ever asked. For You converted me to Yourself ... (Confessions, 8.11-12).
Then we [Augustine and his friend Alypius] went in to my mother and told her, to her great joy. We related how it had come about: she was filled with triumphant exultation and praised You who are mighty beyond what we ask or conceive: for she saw that You had given her more than with all her pitiful weeping she had ever asked. For You converted me to Yourself ... (Confessions, 8.11-12).
A prayer by St. Augustine
Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit, that my thoughts
may all be holy;
Act in me, O Holy Spirit, That I love but
what is holy;
Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit, to defend
all that is holy;
"Read
these counsels slowly. Pause to meditate on these thoughts. They are things
that I whisper in your ear-confiding them-as a friend, as a brother, as a
father. And they are being heard by God. I won't tell you anything new. I will
only stir your memory, so that some thought will arise and strike you; and so
you will better your life and set out along ways of prayer and of Love. And in
the end you will be a more worthy soul."
55. Why are you so reluctant to see yourself and to let your Director
see you as you really are? You will have won a great battle if you lose that
fear of letting yourself be known.
·
Please
Pray for soul of Senator
McCain and his family and for the unity of our country; asking Our Lady of Beauraing to
intercede.
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverence_%28emotion%29
[4]https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/prayers/view.cfm?id=1116
[5]http://www.escrivaworks.org/book/the_way-point-1.htm
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