St. Augustine was born on the 13th November 354 in Tagaste (modern day Souk Ahras). The city of Tagaste lies around 100 kilometers to the South of Hippo (modern day Annaba), the maritime city of which St. Augustine had become bishop. These two cities are found in North Africa in the East of Algeria.
His parents were Monica and Patritius. Monica was a devout Christian, while Patritius remained a pagan until a little before his death in the year 371. After frequenting the elementary school in Tagaste, at the age of ten he was sent to study grammar and classical literature in Madawra, a city not very far from Tagaste. Around the year 369, the young Augustine had to interrupt his studies for a whole year because his father could not continue to pay for his education.
Romanianus, a wealthy man from Tagaste and a friend of the family, paid the expenses so that Augustine could go to Carthage to continue his studies. This was around the year 370. Augustine, who was a highly intelligent student, became a teacher and opened a school in Tagaste (373-374). He also started teaching in Carthage where he remained until the year 383.
For many hears he lived with a woman, whose name is not known, and in 372 they had a son whom they called Adeodatus. Sometime after, due to a strong internal wish to seek the truth, Augustine became a member of a Manichean sect and spent nine whole years with them. The Manicheans believed that there were two gods; one who was the creator of light and goodness and the other who was the creator of darkness and evil. However, Augustine did not find the answers to his questions from the Manichaean experts and was gravely disappointed.
When he was 28 years old, Augustine left Carthage and went to Rome. There he made contacts which led him to become a professor in Milan, a city in which lived the Western Roman Emperor.
The bishop of Milan at the time was St. Ambrose who was the most prominent spiritual leader of the time. Augustine used to go and listen to his sermons, not because he was interested in what he said but because he was fascinated by the speeches woven with such skill and competence. The bishop Ambrose was famous for his oratorical skills and thus Augustine began to be attracted to Ambrose’s message. This first encounter with a Christian intellectual was enough to shake Augustine and get him to remove the mistaken ideas that he harboured against Catholic teaching. The interior conflicts that had been going on inside him for a very long time reached their climax in the summer of the year 386. Augustine talks about this in his Confessions (8, 12, 29):
“….. and I stood up from beside my (friend) Alipius because I felt that it would have been better if I went to cry on my own, and I went away from him enough so that he would not confuse me. This was the state in which I found myself and Alipius understood because I think I said something to him, and the constriction in my voice showed him that I was about to burst out crying. Therefore I stood up but he remained seated completely stunned. I sat, I don’t know how, under a fig tree and allowed the tears to pour out of my eyes like a river as a sacrifice pleasing to you. I spent a long time telling you, not with these same words….Lord how long are you to keep on not listening to me! Lord are you going to remain angry forever! Don’t remember our past wrongs. Because I felt that my faults are still holding me and in my misery I cried out and say, “How long are you going to keep on stretching and saying Tomorrow, Tomorrow! Why not today! Why don’t you put an end to your shame right now!”
St. Augustine continues to say “This is what I told you, while in the bitterness and sorrow of my heart I kept on crying all the time. And suddenly from a nearby house I heard a voice, I am not sure whether a boy’s or a girl’s, singing and repeating often “Take in your hands and read” immediately my face changed and I started troubling my mind in order to remember if there were any games in which children sang something similar to what I had heard but I could not remember that I had ever heard it before. I halted the river of tears and stood up. The meaning I gave to that singing was that God wanted me to open the book and read the first chapter I find. I had heard that once Anton had opened the book of the Gospel and read the words that he felt were a warning to him: Go and sell all your wealth , give it to the poor and you will have a treasure in heaven, and then come and follow me. He took these words for himself and immediately turned to you. I went back to where Alipius was still sitting and where I had left the book with the letters of the Apostle Paul (St. Paul).
I took it in my hands, opened it and read in silence the first chapter that came before my eyes: not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Instead, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh. (Rum 13, 13-14).I didn’t want to read any more as I didn’t need to. As soon as I finished these words, I immediately felt like a light of complete trust filling my heart and all the darkness of doubt went away”
Towards the end of the year 386, Augustine stopped teaching and started thinking to get baptized in the Catholic Church. The bishop Ambrose baptized him on the Easter Vigil of the year 387. On their way back to Africa Augustine and his mother Monica had to stop at the maritime city of Ostia Tiberina (near Rome). During their stay in this city, Augustine and his mother had a strong spiritual experience, the so called ‘mystical vision of Ostia’ A few days later Monica was taken ill and soon after died in Ostia. Her mortal remains are now found in the Basilica of St. Augustine in Rome.
When he returned to Tagaste, Winston together with his son Adeodatus, started living in his family home with some friends of his, amongst whom was Alpius. This was the beginning of the religious community life as designed by Augustine. This distinguished itself as a simple and collected life where nobody owned anything and where the day was organized in prayer, study and manual work.
A few years later, in the year 391, Augustine had to leave Tagaste to go and live in Hippo as he had been chosen to be the future bishop of this city.
Augustine reluctantly accepted to be ordained a priest and to go and help with the administration of the church of Hippo because Valerius, the current bishop was advanced in years. Nevertheless, here too, despite the fact that he became a priest and later bishop burdened with many responsibilities, he never abandoned the ideals of community life so much so that he converted the bishop’s house into a monastery and so he continued to live the community life that he loved so much.
As a bishop St. Augustine distinguished himself as shepherd who was very close to the people, especially the poor and the suffering. He was also famous as a preacher of the Catholic Faith. He performed this by means of his many books, letters and speeches. His writings were very famous and sought after. His many writings are still considered today as the greatest legacy he has left us.
Amongst his works, the most famous are: The Confessions, The City of God (also translated into Maltese) and The Trinity. Apart from his writings, he was famous greatly sought after for his speeches in Hippo and also in various North African cities especially in Carthage. In his travels he was often invited reinforce the faith of the Christians of the place. He used to this through his passionate speeches, full of learning about God and human wisdom. Luckily many of his speeches were transcribed and thus his word is still with us today.
During St. Augustine’s time, the bishop, apart from being a spiritual shepherd, teacher and preacher, also had civil duties to perform, mostly as a guardian of the city as a well as a judge of the civil courts in his city. Many are the letters written by St. Augustine where we can find his thoughts on this.
The ideal of St. Augustine found its fulfilment centuries later when many religious communities were set up modelled on the Rule that he had written for the hermits (men and women) that lived in monasteries that he had founded (the monastery for male monks, for women and for priests that helped him with the administration of his diocese.
These communities worked with great dedication to proclaim the Gospel in various countries. They defended the faith by preaching and teaching and worked for the benefit of the complete human being. The Augustinian religious fathers are considered to be the spiritual heirs of St. Augustine.
To the whole world St. Augustine remains known as the great thinker where one finds a mine of Christian teaching. He is also known as the saint that lived the ideal of community life that made it as the fulfilment of the path to holiness: a life based on the unity among brothers in the search for God where everything is shared equally on the example of the first Christian community (Acts: 4, 32)
St. Augustine died on the 28th August 430 and the Church celebrates his feast on this day. Apart from this the Augustinians also celebrate his conversion on the 24th April.
