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Also Known As: Aurelius
Augustinus; Doctor of Grace
Profile
His father was a pagan who converted on his death bed; his mother was
Saint Monica, a devout Christian. Trained in Christianity, he lost his
faith in youth and led a wild life. Lived with a Carthaginian woman from
the age of 15 through 30. Fathered a son whom he named Adeotadus, which
means the gift of God. Taught rhetoric at Carthage and Milan. After
investigating and experimenting with several philosophies, he became a
Manichaean for several years; it taught of a great struggle between good
and evil, and featured a lax moral code. A summation of his thinking at
the time comes from his Confessions: "God, give me chastity and continence
- but not just now."
Augustine finally broke with the Manichaeans and was converted by the
prayers of his mother and the help of Saint Ambrose of Milan, who baptized
him. On the death of his mother he returned to Africa, sold his property,
gave the proceeds to the poor, and founded a monastery. Monk. Priest.
Preacher. Bishop of Hippo in 396. Founded religious communities. Fought
Manichaeism, Donatism, Pelagianism and other heresies. Oversaw his church
and his see during the fall of the Roman Empire to the Vandals. Doctor of
the Church. His later thinking can also be summed up in a line from his
writings:
Our hearts were made for You, O Lord, and they are restless until they
rest in you.
Born: 13 November 354 at Tagaste, Numidia, North Africa (Souk-Ahras,
Algeria) as Aurelius Augustinus
Died: 28 August 430 at Hippo
Canonized: Pre-Congregation
Patronage
brewers, diocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut, diocese of Kalamazoo
Michigan, printers, diocese of Saint Augustine, Florida, sore eyes,
diocese of Superior, Wisconsin, theologians, diocese of Tucson, Arizona
Representation: child; dove; pen; shell
Readings
God has no need of your money, but the poor have. You give it to the poor,
and God receives it.
Saint Augustine
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The honors of this world, what are they but puff, and emptiness and peril
of falling?
Saint Augustine
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Daily advance, then, in this love, both by praying and by well doing, that
through the help of Him who enjoined it on you, and whose gift it is, it
may be nourished and increased, until, being perfected, it render you
perfect.
Saint Augustine
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What do you possess if you possess not God?
Saint Augustine
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Unhappy is the soul enslaved by the love of anything that is mortal.
Saint Augustine
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The love of worldly possessions is a sort of bird line, which entangles
the soul, and prevents it flying to God.
Saint Augustine
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This very moment I may, if I desire, become the friend of God.
Saint Augustine
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God bestows more consideration on the purity of the intention with which
our actions are performed than on the actions themselves.
Saint Augustine
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I will suggest a means whereby you can praise God all day long, if you
wish. Whatever you do, do it well, and you have praised God.
Saint Augustine
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This is the business of our life. By labor and prayer to advance in the
grace of God, till we come to that height of perfection in which, with
clean hearts, we may behold God.
Saint Augustine
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God in his omnipotence could not give more, in His wisdom He knew not how
to give more, in His riches He had not more to give, than the Eucharist.
Saint Augustine
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God does not command impossibilities, but by commanding admonishes you do
what you can and to pray for what you cannot, and aids you that you may be
able.
Saint Augustine
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Our life and our death are with our neighbor.
Saint Augustine
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Conquer yourself and the world lies at your feet.
Saint Augustine
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O eternal truth, true love and beloved eternity. You are my God. To you do
I sigh day and night. When I first came to know you, you drew me to
yourself so that I might see that there were things for me to see, but
that I myself was not yet ready to see them. Meanwhile you overcame the
weakness of my vision, sending forth most strongly the beams of your
light, and I trembled at once with love and dread.
I sought a way to gain the strength which I needed to enjoy you. But I did
not find it until I embraced "the mediator between God and men, the man
Christ Jesus, who is above all, God blessed for ever." He was calling me
and saying: "I am the way of truth, I am the life."
Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved
you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I
searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things
which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created
things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would have
not been at all. 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.
from the Confessions of Saint Augustine
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Neither are the souls of the pious dead separated from the Church which
even now is the kingdom of Christ. Otherwise there would be no remembrance
of them at the altar of God in the communication of the Body of Christ.
from The City of God by Saint Augustine
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A Christian people celebrates together in religious solemnity the
memorials of the martyrs, both to encourage their being imitated and so
that it can share in their merits and be aided by their prayers."
from Against Faustus the Manichean, by Saint Augustine
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There is an ecclesiastical discipline, as the faithful know, when the
names of the martyrs are read aloud in that place at the altar of God,
where prayer is not offered for them. Prayer, however, is offered for the
dead who are remembered. For it is wrong to pray for a martyr, to whose
prayers we ought ourselves be commended.
from Sermons by Saint Augustine
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At the Lord's table we do not commemorate martyrs in the same way that we
do others who rest in peace so as to pray for them, but rather that they
may pray for us that we may follow in their footsteps.
from Homilies on John by Saint Augustine
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Since we cannot, as yet, understand that He was begotten by the Father
before the day-star, let us celebrate His birth of the Virgin in the
nocturnal hours. Since we do not comprehend how His name existed before
the light of the sun, let us recognize His tabernacle placed in the sun.
Since we do not, as yet, gaze upon the Son inseparably united with His
Father, let us remember Him as the 'bridegroom coming out of his bride
chamber.' Since we are not yet ready for the banquet of our Father, let us
grow familiar with the manger of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Saint Augustine
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He prays for us as our priest, prays in us as our Head, and is prayed to
by us as our God. Therefore let us acknowledge our voice in him and his in
us.
Saint Augustine
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Question the beauty of the earth, the sea, the air distending and
diffusing itself, the sky... question all these realities. All respond:
'See, we are beautiful.' These beauties are subject to change. Who made
them if not the Beautiful One who is not subject to change?
Saint Augustine
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One and the same Word of God extends throughout the Scripture, that it is
one and the same Utterance that resounds in the mouths of all the sacred
writers, since He who was in the beginning God with God has no need for
separate syllables; for he is not subject to time.
Saint Augustine
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Jesus Christ will be Lord of all, or he will not be Lord at all.
Saint Augustine
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If physical things please you, then praise God for them, but turn back
your love to Him who created them, lest in the things that please you, you
displease Him. If souls please you, love them in God; for in themselves
they are changeable, but in Him they are firmly established. Without Him
they pass away and perish. In Him, then, let them be loved, and carry
along with you to Him as many souls as you can, and say to them, "Let us
love Him, let us love Him; He made the world and is not far from it. He
did not make all things and then leave them, but they are of Him and in
Him. See, there He is wherever truth is loved. He is within the very
heart, yet the heart has strayed from Him. Return to your heart, O you
transgressors, and hold fast to Him who made you. Stand with Him and you
will stand fast. Rest in Him and you shall be at rest."
Saint Augustine, from The Confessions
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Let us understand that God is a physician, and that suffering is a
medicine for salvation, not a punishment for damnation.
Saint Augustine
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O Sacrament of Love! O sign of Unity! O bond of Charity! He who would have
Life finds here indeed a Life to live in and a Life to live by.
Saint Augustine
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If you see that you have not yet suffered tribulations, consider it
certain that you have not begun to be a true servant of God; for Saint
Paul says plainly that all who chose to live piously in Christ, shall
suffer persecutions
Saint Augustine
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I speak to you who have just been reborn in baptism, my little children in
Christ, you who are the new offspring of the Church, gift of the Father,
proof of Mother Church's fruitfulness. All of you who stand fast in the
Lord are a holy seed, a new colony of bees, the very flower of our
ministry and fruit of our toil, my joy and my crown. It is the words of
the Apostle that I address to you: Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make
no provision for the flesh and its desires, so that you may be clothed
with the life of him whom you have put on in this sacrament. You have all
been clothed with Christ by your baptism in him. There is neither Jew nor
Greek; there is neither slave nor freeman; there is neither male nor
female; you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Such is the power of this sacrament: it is a sacrament of new life which
begins here and now with the forgiveness of all past sins, and will be
brought to completion in the resurrection of the dead. You have been
buried with Christ by baptism into death in order that, as Christ has
risen from the dead, you also may walk in newness of life.
You are walking now by faith, still on pilgrimage in a mortal body away
from the Lord; but he to whom your steps are directed is himself the sure
and certain way for you: Jesus Christ, who for our sake became man. For
all who fear him he has stored up abundant happiness, which he will reveal
to those who hope in him, bringing it to completion when we have attained
the reality which even now we possess in hope.
This is the octave day of your new birth. Today is fulfilled in you the
sign of faith that was prefigured in the Old Testament by the circumcision
of the flesh on the eighth day after birth. When the Lord rose from the
dead, he put off the mortality of the flesh; his risen body was still the
same body, but it was no longer subject to death. By his resurrection he
consecrated Sunday, or the Lord's day. Though the third after his passion,
this day is the eighth after the Sabbath, and thus also the first day of
the week.
And so your own hope of resurrection, though not yet realized, is sure and
certain, because you have received the sacrament or sign of this reality,
and have been given the pledge of the Spirit. If, then, you have risen
with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the
right hand of God. Set your hearts on heavenly things, not the things that
are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in
God. When Christ, your life, appears, then you too will appear with him in
glory.
from a sermon by Saint Augustine
source:
http://www.catholic-forum.com/saints/sainta02.htm
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