The Feast of the Conversion of Saint Augustine
Today the Order of Saint Augustine celebrates the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Augustine, commemorating the long journey of Augustine away from the darkness of sin and error and towards the light of Christ in truth and in love. This feast naturally calls to mind the very famous scene from Book VIII of St. Augustine's Confessions, telling of his profound encounter in a garden in Milan, and so I will begin by recounting that passage:
I spoke these things, and I wept with a most bitter contrition of my heart. And behold I heard a voice from a neighboring house, like that of a boy or a girl, I know not which, saying in a singsong voice, and often repeating, "Take up and read, take up and read." Immediately my countenance changed, and I began to consider most intently whether in any kind of play children were wont to sing such words, but I could not remember that I had anywhere heard any such thing.
And so, repressing the course of my tears, I got up, interpreting that childlike chant to be nothing less than a divine admonition that I should open the Bible and read the first chapter I should come upon. For I had heard about Antony that he had taken the text of the Gospel, which was being read when he came into the church, as particularly addressed to him: Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and come, follow Me (Mt 19:21). And by this divine oracle he was in that instant converted to you.
Therefore, I returned in haste to the place where Alypius was sitting, for when I arose, I had there laid down the book of the Apostle. I snatched it up, opened it, and read in silence the lines on which I first cast my eyes: Not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and wantonness, not in strife and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and as for the flesh, take no thought of it for its lusts (Rom 13:13-14).
I would read no further, nor was there any need for me to do so. For with the conclusion of this sentence, it was as if a light of confidence and security had streamed into my heart, and all the darkness of my former hesitation was dispelled.
There is a significant background to all of this which is too great to go into in any great detail here. What should be pointed out, however, is that while in a sense this conversion of Augustine had the effect of an instant conversion, a profound explosion of grace which suddenly and entirely consumed his heart and turned him towards Christ, preceding all of this is a span of over ten years of seeking wisdom, searching for God, searching for that greater meaning and deepest ground of his very being, a search that was often severely impeded by sinful living, by lust, by pride, by worldly ambition. The conflict of these two basically competing desires, the desire for fulfillment in God and the desire for worldly fulfillment, created a restlessness in Augustine's heart that both motivated him towards Christ while simultaneously leading him towards deeper despair. His life was the epitome of what many centuries later a man from Augustine's own native land, Albert Camus, would refer to as the "absurd," the recognition that we live in a world that is fundamentally incapable of fulfilling our deepest desires, such that our lives in this world are constantly seeking that which it can never find - a truth that Augustine would recognize as being absolutely true until such time as one "puts on the Lord Jesus Christ." Augustine finally, after many years of searching, discovered the ultimate truth that only salvation in Christ is capable of destroying the absurdity of human existence.
It is impossible to speak of Augustine's conversion without mentioning two most pivotal people in his life: his mother, St. Monica, and the bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose. Augustine's mother was a devout Catholic who spent her entire life as a mother seeking Augustine's conversion, praying, weeping, exhorting (and Augustine might add, nagging). His mother was very active in the Church, and became friendly with many priests as well as her own bishop. Augustine recounts in Book III:
You gave her, then, yet another answer through one of Your priests, a certain bishop brought up in Your Church and well-read in Your books. Asked by her to agree to confer with me, to refute my errors, to show me how my beliefs were evil and to teach me what was good (an office he willingly performed when he met with persons fitted to receive it), he refused - and that was a very prudent decision on his part, as I have come to understand.
The bishop replied that I was as yet unteachable, because I was puffed up with the novelty of that heresy [Manichaeism], and even more because, as she had also told him, I had already puzzled many inexperienced persons with some captious questions. "Let him alone," he said. "Simply pray to our Lord for him. He will, at length, by reading, discover his error and how great is its impiety."
At the same time the bishop told her how his mother, being deceived, had given him to the Manichees when he was still very young, and that he had not only read but also copied out almost all their books, and had by himself come to realize, without anyone disputing with him or convincing him, how much that sect was to be abhorred, and for that reason he had forsaken it.
When he told her this, she still was not satisfied, and continued to persist, entreating him with many tears to see me and talk with me. He then became somewhat annoyed with her persistent entreaty and said to her, "Go on your way and continue in your life of prayer, for it cannot be that a son of such tears should perish." As she many times afterward told me, she received those words as if they had sounded forth from Heaven.
Monica continued then to live her life as a holy example for Augustine, and devoted her entire life to prayer and to the frequent reception of the Sacraments, herself attending Mass daily, as Augustine would later recall. Her life was devoted to prayer and to penance, in particular for the sake of Augustine's conversion, and it is impossible to discount the importance of this. So many of us despair over the way in which our loved ones live, when they live apart from God, and we see in Monica the perfect example of how to conduct ourselves for their benefit: we must live lives devoted to prayer and penance for the sake of their conversion, and trust always in the great mercy of God.
The other prominent figure in Augustine's conversion was that holy bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose. Augustine sought out Ambrose not because he was a bishop or because he was a Christian, but rather because Augustine was rising in the Roman empire as a rhetorician of some great renown, and had heard of Ambrose's tremendous oratory skills, and so desired to learn from him greater skill in that craft. But Augustine was unable to speak with Ambrose as he desired, because Ambrose was always so busy ministering to the sick and needy of his diocese, and so the only way Augustine could learn from him was to listen to him preach. Augustine writes in Book VI:
In reality, then, I had little opportunity to ask the things I desired to draw from the heart of this, Your saintly oracle, unless the question could be answered briefly. Moreover, my perplexities required one perfectly disengaged, to whom they might be fully represented, and I could never find him so much at leisure.
However, I heard him among the people every Sunday as he was rightly expounding the Word of truth (2 Tm 2:15) to the people, and I was more and more convinced that all these knots of artificial calumnies, which my deceivers had tied so tightly to impugn the Divine Books, could be unraveled.
And so it was by Ambrose's faithful preaching of the truths of Scripture, as well as by his example of holy living, that Augustine finally began to have his heart inflamed in the truth of Christ, and the slow process of conversion began to take place, and this process leading to the scene in the garden became like a slow burning fuse anticipating a giant explosion. And from this explosion of grace which led to his great conversion, Augustine then went from trudging through the marsh with great effort, to sailing along towards the sea of baptism with the wind of the Spirit ever in his sails. His biographer St. Possidius writes so beautifully of Augustine's conversion:
He was soon strengthened in the Catholic faith and conceived a burning desire to make such progress in it that he might be ready for the waters of salvation at the holy season of Easter which was not far off. And through the opportune help of God it did indeed come about that he received from the great and holy bishop Ambrose both the saving doctrine of the Catholic Church and the divine sacraments.
So today we reflect on this beautiful grace of conversion, a grace that was present for Augustine and that is present always for us. We seek always to conform our lives to this grace and cooperate with it by our own holy living, by our devotion to prayer, to the Word of God, and to the saving Sacraments of the Church. In his story we also see the great example of daily conversion in Monica and Ambrose, and in them we recognize the models for how we must live our own lives of devotion to Christ. We also see in them how each of us have our own unique gifts to offer in service of the Church, and how by recognizing our own calling, by recognizing who we truly are in Christ and who we are called to be, we may most effectively witness to the Gospel. Finally, we see in this story of Augustine's conversion the hope for all our loved ones who have yet to come to understand the truth of Christ and the salvation that is offered through faith in Him. We continue to offer prayer and penance for their conversion and for the conversion of the whole world, thus uniting our lives fully to the salvific action of Christ on the Cross.
Prayer
Lord God,
you are the unfailing light
that guided Saint Augustine out of darkness,
the eternal shepherd
who called him to follow you.
As we rejoice in his conversion
direct our lives by his example
and deepen our faith through his teaching.
Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.