AUGUSTINE AND OUR DIVIDED SELVES

   
Deus, in adjutorium meum intende. Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina.
O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me.

 Father's sermon this morning fell right in line with today's Epistle, Paul's Letter to Galatians 5: 16-24.  We are truly divided. We are physical beings, needing things to sustain our bodies; and we are spiritual, our souls reaching for God, the end of all necessity. Our physical selves are easily distracted from the importance of seeking God and keeping ourselves in His Presence at all times. We are tempted by the world, the flesh and the devil, distracted by what is before our eyes.
     What does Paul admonish us to avoid? Whew! What a list:  Fornication, uncleanness, immodesty, luxury, idolatry, withcrafts, enmities, contention, emulations, drunkenness, revellings will keep us from God's kingdom. He adjures us to seek the fruits of the Spirit: charity, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity.

     O.K. Now let's check off what might apply to us, good and bad, physical and spiritual. But don't be discouraged if you fall short. We all do.It isn't easy to become a saint, and some of the saintliest saints had terribly unsaintly pasts, from crooks and trollops to mass murderers and devil worshippers.

     Augustine didn't quite fit the picture of some of those worst ones, but he was definitely a divided self. Born in Tagaste, North Africa in the year 354 AD, son of a Catholic mother, Monica, and a pagan father, Patricius, he was eventually to be a Bishop, Confessor and one of the most famous Doctors of the Western Church. He died at Hippo in Africa in 430 after 36 years as its Bishop.

     The Confessions of St. Augustine is probably the world's first autobiography. It's called Confessions for good reason. His parents were well-to-do and Augustine had the best educational opportunities. Patricius allowed Monica to raise Augustine as a Catholic, although he was not baptized. She warned him against the sines of the flesh when he went off to university at Carthage in 371 at the age of 17. Mothers haven't changed much in 1700 years or so, and neither have young people. Augustine treated this as "womanish advice;" and admits in his Confessions that he was "in the mood to be seduced."

     Very soon he found a mistress and, in today's verbiage, shacked up with her. They had a son whom they named Adeodatus, "gift from God."  Hmm!
    
     Augustine also got swept up in a heretical sect, the Manicheans, who believed that two powers were at war in the universe, the Father of Greatness - positive, immaterial qualities, light and intelligence - and Satan - base, material world and source of all evil.. They held that no Jesus figure ever triumphed over Satan, being material as well as immaterial.

     Monica wept and prayed for years over her son's physical transgressions and spiritual error. He was a teacher of rhetoric, first in Rome, then in Milan. St. Ambrose was preaching in Milan and had defied Emperor Theodosius' order to close some churches. Augustine was impressed with his fortitude and agreed to attend Mass with his mother (who had moved to Milan) to hear Ambrose. He began to re-think his Manichean ideas. At the same time he was reading Cicero's Academia, and came across a passage that decried intelligent men falling for some oddball sect. So, between Ambrose and Cicero, Augustine changed his tune.

     Now for the hard part of our divided selves. Which part will triumph in the end? As a Catholic, Augustine could not continue to live with a mistress; and, as it was in those times, a gentleman could not marry a woman of low birth, which his mistress was. Augustine did the hard thing. He gave her up, which "cut and wounded" his heart. She went back to North Africa and Adeodatus stayed with Augustine. In 387 Ambrose baptized both of them. A short time later Monica died, happy that Augustine chose soul over body.

     Besides his autobiography, Augustine wrote profusely. His influence in christianity has been said to perhaps be second only to St. Paul.

9/18/11