Dame Maura Sée presents brief but useful extracts from the major writings of St Augustine which are unequalled for their brilliance, charm and forcefulness. Augustine was concerned with God’s love for us and our response, with what we can know of God and with what living the life to which God calls us means in practice. These sixty well selected passages reflect these themes.
64 pp. Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd., 1995. To purchase this book online, go to www.darton-longman-todd.co.uk
Contents
Introduction
Daily Readings with St Augustine
Suggestion for further reading
Sources
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Review |
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The heart at rest
Ask the beauty of the earth, the beauty of the sea, the beauty of the sky. Question the order of the stars, the sun whose brightness lights the day, the moon whose splendour softens the gloom of night.
Ask of the living creatures that move in the waves, that roam the earth, that fly in the heavens.
Question all these and they will answer, ‘Yes, we are beautiful’. Their very loveliness is their confession of God: for who made these lovely mutable things, but he who is himself unchangeable beauty?
Too late have I loved you, O beauty ever ancient ever new, too late have I loved you.
I sought for you abroad, but you were within me though I was far from you. Then you touched me, and I longed for your peace, and now all my hope is only in your great mercy.
Give what you command and then command what you will.
You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless till it rests in you. Who will grant me to rest content in you? To whom shall I turn for the gift of your coming into my heart so that I may forget all the wrong I have done, and embrace you alone, my only good?
What sort of prayer?
A man calls on God that he may not be put to confusion. Is it so that the adultery he intends may come off? that someone he hopes to inherit from may die? that a piece of sharp practice may succeed? This is not to call on God, but on one’s own evil desires.
To call on God is to invite him into your heart: but will you dare to invite so great a Father when you have no dwelling fit for him? Your heart is full of evil desires, and yet you invite him in.
If you call on God, let it not be to ask for anything. For when you call upon God for aid the call you make is for him to come into yourself. What place is there into which your Lord and God can come, what place fit for the God who made heaven and earth? Is it a small thing that God himself should fill you?
If he comes without silver and gold, do you not want him? Which of the things he has made can satisfy you, if God himself does not?
Come, you ,blessed of my Father, receive a kingdom
What are we to receive? A kingdom. For doing what? ‘I was hungry and you fed me.’ What is more ordinary, more of this world, than to feed the hungry, and yet it rates the Kingdom of Heaven!
‘Feed the hungry, take the homeless into your house, clothe the naked.’ But what if you can’t afford bread for the hungry, or have no house nor spare clothes? Give a cup of cold water, put two pence in the alms box. The poor widow gave as much with her two pennies as Zacchaeus did with half his fortune.
What you have is the measure of your gift. Yet many give alms to a beggar to show off, and not because they love their brother.
You stand before God: ask your own heart, look at what you did and why you did it: was it for the empty praise of men? Look at your heart, because you cannot judge what you do not see.
So, beloved, let us search our hearts in God’s presence: you can hide from man, but not from God.
Flee to God himself if you want to run away from him; flee by confessing, not by hiding; say to him, ‘You are my refuge’, and so let the love which alone brings life grow within you.
Works of mercy
Two works of mercy set a man free: forgive and you will be forgiven, and give and you will receive.
When we pray we are all beggars before God: we stand before the great householder bowed down and weeping, hoping to be given something; and that something is God himself.
What does a poor man beg from you? Bread. What do you beg from God? – Christ, who said, ‘I am the living bread which came down from heaven’.
Do you really want to be forgiven? Then forgive. Do you hope to receive something? Then give to another. And if you want your prayer to fly up to God, give it two wings, fasting and almsgiving.
But look carefully at what you do: don’t think it is enough to fast if it is only penance for sin, and does not benefit someone else. You deprive yourself of something, but to whom do you give what you do without?
Fast in such a way that you rejoice to see that dinner eaten by another; not grumbling and looking gloomy, giving because the beggar wearies you rather than because you are feeding the hungry.
If you are sad when you give alms, you lose both bread and merit, because ‘God loves a cheerful giver’.
Be of good cheer
Do not despair of yourselves. You are men, made in the image of God, and he who made you men was himself made man; the blood of the only begotten Son was shed for you. If, thinking of your frailty, you hold yourselves cheap, value yourselves by the price that was paid for you.
I ask you what you believe in, not what you live up to: you will answer that you believe in Christ.
Your faith is your righteousness; because if you believe, you are on your guard, if you are on your guard, you try; and God knows your endeavour and sees your good will, and waits for your striving, and supports your faintness, and crowns your victory.
The Lord knows who are his own, like the farmer who sees the grain among the chaff. Don’t be afraid that you will not be recognized, that storms will blow the grain under the chaff. The judge is not some countryman with a pitchfork, but the triune God. He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but he is your God too. You ask him for your reward and the giver is himself the gift. What more can you want?
The grasp of faith
The apostles saw the Lord himself and have told us the words they heard from his lips. We have heard those words too, but have not seen the Lord. Are we then less happy than they who both saw and heard him? How can we have fellowship with them? Is it possible? Yes, because we hold the same faith.
You remember that one of the disciples would not believe unless he touched the wounds: he did, and cried out, ‘My Lord and my God’. Touching the man, he acknowledged the Godhead.
And to comfort us who reach by faith him who sits in the heavens, the Lord said, ‘Because you saw, you believed: blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed’.
Beloved, he is speaking to us: let us attain to the bliss he promised by holding fast to what we cannot see, for though we can no longer see him with our eyes, he has not gone away from our hearts, and you believe in him, though you do not see him. You long for his coming again, and yet you know that in his hidden mercy he is still with you, because he said, ‘Lo, I am with you always till the end of time’.
The imitation of Christ
Pride is the great sin, the head and cause of all sins, and its beginning lies in turning away from God. Beloved, do not make light of this vice, for the proud man who disdains the yoke of Christ is constrained by the harsher yoke of sin: he may not wish to serve, but he has to, because if he will not be love’s servant, he will inevitably be sin’s slave.
From pride arises apostasy: the soul goes into darkness, and misusing its free will falls into other sins, wasting its substance with harlots, and he who was created a fellow of the angels becomes a keeper of swine.
Because of this great sin of pride, God humbled himself, taking the nature of a servant, bearing insults and hanging on a cross. To heal us, he became humble; shall we not be ashamed to be proud?
You have heard the Lord say that if you forgive those who have injured you, your Father in heaven will forgive you. But those who speak the world’s language say, ‘What! you won’t revenge yourself, but let him boast of what he did to you? Surely you will let him see that he is not dealing with a weakling?’ Did the Lord revenge himself on those who struck him? Dying of his own free will, he uttered no threats: and will you, who do not know when you will die, get in a rage and threaten?
The two commandments
Keep this always before you: that you are to love God and your neighbour. The love of God is the first to be commanded, but the love of your neighbour is the first to be fulfilled.
You cannot yet see God, but you earn the right to see him by loving your neighbour; and looking at the source of that love, you will see God as much as you can now.
Remember that in Christ you have everything. Do you want to love God? You have him in Christ. Do you want to love your neighbour? You have him in Christ, for ‘the Word was made flesh’.
You know that the perfection of love is to love your enemy, but at least take great care that you do not hate your brother – if you love only your brother you are not perfect, but if you hate him where are you? What are you? Search your hearts.
Do not bear a grudge because of a harsh word, don’t sink down to the level of the earth because of a quarrel over earthly things.
Do not imagine that if you hate your brother you live in Christ and walk in the light. ‘The man who says he is in the light and yet hates his brother is still in the dark.’
A Conversion
The very toys of toys and vanities of vanities still held me; they plucked at the garment of my flesh and whispered softly, ‘Will you cast us off for ever? and from that moment shall we no longer be with you – for ever?’, and I hesitated, for a strong habit said to me, ‘Do you think you can live without them?’
But continence said to me, ‘Why do you re1y on yourself and so waver? Cast yourself upon him, fear not, he will not withdraw himself and let you fall; he will receive you and heal you’.
So I rose and, throwing myself down under a certain fig tree, wept bitterly in contrition of heart. Suddenly I heard from a neighbouring house the voice of a child, singing over and over again, ‘Take up and read, take up and read’.
Checking my weeping I got up and went back to where I had been sitting, and had laid down the volume of the apostle, and read the first passage which met my eyes: ‘Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in impurity and wantonness, not in strife and envy; but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfil its lusts.’
I needed to read no further, for suddenly, as it were by a light infused into my heart, all darkness vanished away.
