The Confessions of St Augustine
- his journey out and back to finding God in himself.
led by Fr Brian Lowery OSA,
Prior of Convento S' Agostino,
San Gimignano, Tuscany, Italy.
“YOU WERE ALWAYS THERE”
Take a tip from Father Brian Lowery OSA, founder of the Augustinian community in San Gimignano and well-known to those fortunate enough to have been able to join one the pilgrimages to his retreat house. When you pick up a copy of Augustine's Confessions, remember that the first five chapters of Book 1 make up a kind of introductory meditation by the author as he prepares himself to write his challenging work.
'It’s a marvelous meditation but a bit difficult,' Father Lowery warned us at the start of a three-day weekend retreat at Clare Priory before Easter. 'So, many people get discouraged at this point. Perhaps they were fooled by the word, "Confessions." This book is not like The Confessions of a Housewife, The Confessions of a Spy, or The Confessions of a Courtesan.
'Confessions traces the route of the famous conversion of St Augustine as he himself wrote about it, and the book has been a personal inspiration to many readers, and listeners as well, for over 1600 years.'
The story line begins with Chapter 6 of Book 1, where we find Augustine as an infant. That is around page six or seven depending on the edition being used. So stick with it, was the advice. Don't be put off, and perhaps return to the opening meditation later.
Father Lowery had asked us to bring our copies of Confessions to the sessions and to underline and write in them if something struck us. 'That is how the Confessions will become a friend, and we will be able to return to the book easily and often in the future. It is good to read the Confessions slowly, for every word of Augustine is a foot deep and should not be glided over.' Father Lowery was using Frank Sheed's translation of the book. He also recommended Henry Chadwick and Maria Boulding.
In his Confessions Augustine constantly uses the word 'you', Father Lowery pointed out as we started. 'That is because he is speaking to God and not to us directly. The book is actually a long prayer. "You" means God. The Confessions is his song of praise and thanksgiving for the mercy of God that he concretely discovered in his own personal story. Augustine "confesses", or better “professes”, God's goodness and love. The whole book is a prayer and full of many wonderful moments which are even more ardent prayers, he said.
'I call these moments “spontaneous prayers” because they are prayers that seem to burst out in scattered places throughout the book of the Confessions. In these special passages Augustine changes tense from the past, where he is telling us of what once happened, to the present where he breaks out into prayer as if stirred directly by God. This is the reason God seems so close when you read the Confessions. Something is going on on those pages. God and Augustine are in conversation, and we are let in on it.'
The plan during our four sessions was to stop at some of the key passages along the route of the Confessions in the short time we had and to read some of Augustine’s most pertinent thoughts about his conversion. 'And perhaps,' Father Lowery added, 'about our own conversions, too, that are going on at this very moment. We will read about what Augustine would call his sinful past and how his freedom grew ever more diminished as his habits became stronger. We will also discover a mysterious and subtle presence of God, with which God little by little worked on his heart and led him back to him.'"HE WASN'T BORN A SAINT!"
Augustine of Hippo grew up in North Africa, in a remote part of the Roman Empire that is now Algeria. 'He was a very normal boy, and his family had its normal share of disfunctions. That’s one of the things I like about Augustine,' Father Lowery told us. 'He wasn’t born a saint and he didn’t come from a pious and exemplary family. There’s hope for us yet!'
Augustine, he reminded us, was the great hesitater, probably more popularly known for what he was converted from than what he was eventually converted to. 'His earlier life with its youthful sexual wanderings and brash arrogance is more fascinating to most people than his later life as a monk, mystic and bishop. Someone once said he was a saint that had his cake and ate it too. He will forever be famous for putting off his conversion. He becomes the patron saint of procrastinators, putting off to tomorrow what should be done today.'
He was in his forties when he wrote his Confessions, around 397 AD. It was the first true autobiography ever written, said Father Lowery. 'A canticle to God and full of psychological insights which might have been written yesterday. They are the "story of a soul", to use the words of Therese of Lisieux, and also a story of God and how he is constantly at work seeking us. It is one long song of praise and thanksgiving for the intervention of God, praise and thanksgiving not only for his intervention in Augustine's personal life story but also for his intervention in our lives too. For his providence in the in-born gifts he gives us, in the graces he bestows in our difficult times – our sinfulness, loss, disappointments, betrayal – and in the people and events he sends to help us.'DIVINE PROVIDENCE
Augustine, divine providence is all pervasive: 'It penetrates the spaces of a person's life just as God himself penetrates the spaces of the whole universe. It works night and day right from the beginning of life, because God is the creator.'
Here we can detect a deep an abiding conviction of Augustine's, Father Lowery says, 'namely that God is always and everywhere present to us, providing for us in all our needs. God’s providence is especially active along the road of our personal history. He said it many times in the Confessions about his own road: "You were with me", he would say. "You were always there."'
Augustine himself tells us that he recognized the mysterious presence of God in his life, an active presence, only later when he was writing the Confessions and looking back at his earlier years. He found that God was always close by him whether he was aware of it or not.
God was present in the in-born personal qualities that would enable him to go looking for God, what Father Lowery calls 'inner providence': his exceptional intelligence, his vigour and love of life, his great capacity for friendship, his passion for truth, which would all help him along the road of his own conversion.
God had also been near him when he was in a perilous spiritual state as a young man of between 16 and 20. Years later Augustine saw God's hand in the negative events of his life: the sensuality for which he is so well-known, painful loss, grief, and the disappointments he suffered in people and in his career. As we began to move through the Confessions we wondered how and when God was going to get Augustine out of all his plights and predicaments to be free for conversion. And Father Lowery showed us where and how to look. What Father Lowery calls 'negative providence' goaded Augustine into not remaining where he was, but to ask questions and seek what could truly give him lasting happiness.
And there was another kind of presence, 'outer providence' in the people, things, circumstances and events that came into Augustine’s life as if sent by God, to do God’s work for him. One example is found in a book, Cicero's Hortensius which Augustine was given when he was studying the art of public speaking, at the age of 19. It changed his life.
As Father Lowery explained: 'Cicero spoke of the importance of philosophy with its pursuit of wisdom for its own sake, not to embrace this or that philosophical school. He lights a fire in young Augustine, who up to then was interested in merely the beauty of good style. No longer satisfied with mere eloquence Augustine now begins his own search for wisdom. The search will eventually lead him to God. Reading this pagan author can be called the beginning of Augustine’s conversion.'
But, as enthusiastic as he seemed about Cicero, Augustine couldn’t be fully taken by him. As Augustine himself wrote, the name of Christ was not there in the book. 'His mother Monica had made a deep impression on him as a child as she spoke with him about Christ and prayed with him,' Father Lowery said. 'The name of Christ remained fixed in his heart. Augustine was not untouched by a Christian culture, even though he was not baptized. His mother planted a seed of the love of Jesus Christ that would survive the years.'
Monica, who prayed for her son incessantly and never gave up on him, was another example of 'outer providence', one of the many people found in the Confessions who helped God to accomplish his work for Augustine. Saint Ambrose, whom Augustine met as a result of a career move to Milan in search of fame and wealth, was another. 'All unknowing,' writes Augustine, 'I was brought by God to him, that knowing I should be brought by him to God.'
Ambrose, bishop of Milan, had a reputation as a great orator. So Augustine, a fellow orator, started going to the cathedral to judge his style, not his message. But little by little the truth of what Ambrose preached began to affect him, and the homilies answered many of the questions about Scripture that had been nagging for a long time, said Father Lowery. Bishop Ambrose welcomed Augustine like a father and his guidance helped him further along the road to his famous conversion – though not, of course, straight away! (We were only on Book Five.)Some questions for all of us
The active closeness of God in one’s life, despite all appearances, is one of the main reasons for Augustine's writing his Confessions, Father Lowery suggested. 'He wanted us to know that God never leaves us, no matter how far we go from him. He is the Hound of Heaven. God is all the time working in all sorts of ways to bring us to himself. Augustine wanted to encourage his readers and listeners on their own roads, not by preaching a sermon to us or handing us a treatise on theology but by showing the effect of divine grace in the story of another human being like ourselves.'
Father Lowery posed some questions for us all, about God's providence in our own lives, firstly about inner providence. What gifts did God put into your personality? What it is it that helps you to seek and maybe find God? Is it a passion for truth as it was for Augustine? Or maybe a compassion for others? Perhaps a practical nature that rejects nonsense? A special understanding of the human heart? A desire to improve humanity? A love of spiritual beauty? Extraordinary courage? A delight in friendship? Or many other possibilities of God's inner Providence for you?
'It is very important,' he says, 'to fight the temptation of saying "There's nothing. I'm not special." We are all special. God did not make a mistake when he created us. Providence operates mysteriously in each of us in a unique and personal way.' The trick is to find out just how it is working in you.
Next, about negative providence. It has a way of disconnecting us from old ways of thinking and feeling. 'It sets us looking for something that cannot be lost, something that doesn’t disappoint, something that doesn’t leave us half filled. 'This happens when people die, let us down or go out of our lives,' said Father Lowery, 'and when goals and achievements we dreamt about do not turn out to be what we had hoped for. We all have our stories about loss and disappointment. But I wonder if we see in these things the providential presence of God, moving us ahead to question, to seek out our true goods that can’t be lost and don't disappoint? In negative providence God seems to be saying: "Don't stop here, keep looking. There’s more. I am awaiting you at the end."'
And then about outer providence. God does much of his work through other people, Father Lowery reminded us. 'The young Augustine had a passion for truth, which we call 'inner providence'. But that passion needed to be awakened by something or someone. Cicero's book did the job.' But it needed his mother Monica, Ambrose his bishop, and many other people in between, to help him reach God. 'How many times certain gifts come to life only later! Young or old, so many people are not aware of the riches they have within them. God does much of his work through other people, people like all of us. Providence can make an instrument even of a Roman philosopher.'Yes, we can!
'The experience of seeing God “always there” effectively in so many ways can lift us up. I think Augustine had us in mind when he wrote his book. He knew that we could not be that different from him. And he knew that the same God would be “always there” in our lives too.
'After reading the Confessions the heart cannot say "I cannot," but draws strength from Augustine's example. The weak take courage. The strong rejoice and continue along their road to God, only now more certain than ever that they can arrive. That’s our story too.'
'What would Augustine want us to take away from our weekend retreat?' asked Father Lowery. 'Augustine worked hard on the book. I am convinced he would want us to understand that just as God was “always there” in his life, so is God “always there” in ours. He is there in the inborn gifts he gave us by which we are drawn to seek him. He is there in the pain of wrongdoing, in the sorrow of loss and in the confusion of disappointment. He is there, too, in so many people who enter into our lives, as well as situations and circumstances. Upon reflection, we too can say “You were always there.”'There were between 25 and 30 people, visitors along with parishioners, at each of Father Lowery's sessions, and more than 40 came to the Saturday night pasta evening when the Prior, Father Bernard, was chief cook. Full of typical Augustinian hospitality and friendship, as well as spirituality and learning, it was a weekend Augustine would have been proud of. We all went home full of enthusiasm, encouraged, empowered, elated, grateful, and looking forward to Father Lowery's next visit.
Irene Lally FoAThe full text and audio recordings of Fr Brian's talks are available by clicking here.
Friday evening
