It was the community spirit that brought me together with the Augustinians and St. Augustine. It was a beautiful and familiar environment, a peaceful and blessed environment. What I found in the Augustinian communities, in Malta and abroad, was the living experience of St. Augustine’s ideals for community life: People who live “one heart and one soul in God.”
The Augustinian Charism in today’s world
Since St. Augustine lived centuries ago, in a world and at a time very different from ours, the question arises spontaneously what is still relevant from St. Augustine’s thought and experience. The Augustinian charism is built on universal Christian themes and is therefore still present in today’s world. Certain aspects that are still valid today are:
– community life: the experience of persons living together in harmony, in unity and in the search for God in their lives;
– justice and peace: they go together, because there is no one without the other;
– interiority: man seeks the meaning of life, he seeks happiness, he finds them not by moving away from himself, but on the contrary by entering into himself and thus the need for interiority This search for meaning in life, as well as the search for happiness, is the search for God. In St. Augustine’s words, man “finds the rest and happiness of his life when he finds God”;
– the theological theme of grace: God who gives grace (a free gift, a gift that is not always deserved and a gift that is also sometimes not asked for) so that man can begin again in his life. Grace is the help that God gives to man to overcome difficulties in life.
Who is the Augustinian for you?
The Augustinian is the person who follows the thought and steps of St. Augustine, who lives the Augustinian charism. Therefore, the Augustinian is the person who lives the interiority, lives in harmony with other people, practices justice and strives for peace, seeks God, and surrenders himself to God. He is a person who is thirsty for God, loves God, and is loved by God.
