Waterlooville
SACRED HEART PARISH
Waterlooville
| A SAINT for the WEEK August 28th. St. Augustine. The son of St. Monica and a pagan father was born in 354 at Tagaste (in modern Algeria), was brought up as a Christian but not baptised, and studied at Carthage University in order to pursue a legal career. He virtually gave up his Christian faith, and lived with a mistress who bore him a son, Adeodatus. He moved first to Rome and then to Milan, where he was influenced by St. Ambrose. His spiritual struggle (described in his Confessions) resulted in his baptism in 386. He then returned to Africa, lived a semi-monastic life with some friends, was ordained priest in 391 and in 396 became Bishop of Hippo. His writings are copious and of great significance: apart from the Confessions, there are sermons on the Gospels, his important work on the Holy Trinity, the Church, the Sacraments, God’s grace, and his The City of God, which contrasts Christianity and the ‘world’ (in the negative sense). It cannot be denied that Augustine’s writing is in some respects affected by his personal history. It clouded his views on the sinfulness of the human race, and, to a certain extent, on the role of marriage and sex in human life. This resulted in a pell-mell dash for baptism lest infants be borne off to hell, and a Church phobia about sexuality which has survived in part to this day. But that is not the whole Augustine, and to write him off as a harmful neurotic – as many do – is an absurd imbalance. He was an extremely effective pastoral bishop at the time the Roman Empire was disintegrating and the Vandals were attacking North Africa. He died in 430 and is one of the four great Western Doctors (along with Jerome, Gregory and Ambrose). After the loss of North Africa to Islam, his remains were taken to Pavia, in Northern Italy, where they are enshrined near those of the philosopher Boethius. |
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