I am not sure how many times I have read St. Augustine’s “Confessions,” but because our new Holy Father is a member of the Augustinian order, I thought it would be interesting and spiritually beneficial to re-read some sections of the “Confessions,” to appreciate what Leo emphasizes in his talks and writings. I suspect that we are going to see the presence of St. Augustine in Leo’s teaching. The following is from the introduction by the translator, John X. Ryan, of the copy of the “Confessions” that I have:
“By common consent, the work known as the ‘Confessions’ of St. Augustine has a special place among the world’s great books. Autobiographical in character, it is not an attempt to tell all the events of the writer’s life, least of all the outward events of those years. But no writer ever went deeper into his own character and deeds, passed keener judgments upon himself, or revealed himself more fully and more humbly to others. … His book is not only a most penetrating psychological study and a unique document for understanding the spiritual and ascetical life, but it is also a storehouse of thought for the philosopher and the theologian, and for others as well.
“Because of such things, it is not to be wondered that this unique book should have immediately found many readers and that more than 1,500 years after its publication it still attracts countless readers and affects them deeply.”
I do not think that John Ryan’s praise is excessive. The “Confessions of St. Augustine” is an amazing book, and Augustine was an amazing thinker. That a book written more than 1,500 years ago still deeply touches many people is truly remarkable.
The book “The Christian Philosophy of St. Augustine” was written by Etienne Gilson, one of the outstanding Catholic philosophers of the 20th century. In detail, Gilson comments and explains Augustine’s philosophy. The book is obviously the work of an outstanding scholar. I know Gilson’s books were read by seminarians when I was in the major seminary. One paragraph leapt off the page at me while I was reading Gilson’s book on Augustine’s philosophy. The following is from that paragraph:
“God is charity, the moral life is charity; God, then, must be within us. He must circulate, so to speak, within us like a living water from which flow both our virtues and our acts. To live by charity, we must do two things: move towards God, i.e., towards charity, and possess charity even now as a pledge of future happiness, i.e., possess God. Indeed, charity is not only the means whereby we shall possess God; it is God already possessed, obtained and circulating, so to speak, within us as through the gift, he has made of himself. Thus charity is like the pledge of the possession of God, and yet it is more than a pledge … God’s charity … is given once and for all, and will never be taken back. Let us not say, then, that in charity we have the pledge of future happiness but rather an installment on it, i.e., a gift which will not be taken back … but will be completed and made perfect. We have charity now; later we shall have Charity itself. Only the doctrine of grace enables us to explain how this possession of God in love, incomplete though it may be as yet, is possible for man here below.”
I can vividly recall when I first discovered the meaning of the term “grace,” which is what Gilson is writing about. I was in my first year as a major seminarian in the seminary in Huntington, Long Island, which was my third year in college. I did not discover the meaning of sanctifying grace by reading Gilson, but by reading a book by Dom Columba Marmion entitled “Christ in His Mysteries.”
I wonder if anyone is reading that book today. I was so stunned by Marmion’s words that I went to my spiritual director, James Coffey, who had recommended the book to me, to ask him if what Marmion wrote was the teaching of the Catholic Church. Jim assured me that it was. I am not exaggerating when I say that Marmion’s comments on grace changed my life. I thought that the truth that God lives within us, that God shares his life with us, was astounding — an awesome, boggling truth. I still believe that. I just noticed what I am using as a bookmark while reading Gilson’s book. It is the holy card given out at the funeral Mass for Msgr. Jim Coffey in 2007.
Small world, isn’t it? Coincidence? Could the presence of the card have something to do with Gilson’s and Marmion’s comments on grace? Jim Coffey was a great teacher. Might he still be teaching me?
Father Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica. His new book, “The Cosmic Love Story: God and Us,” is available on Amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.