St. Augustine of Hippo

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Today is a colossal figure--St. Augustine. [cue trumpets]

I am tempted to just give a link and leave it at that. Augustine is quoted eighty-five times in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. He is excerpted as readings for the Office of Readings eighty-two times. Second place is a tie between Ambrose and Leo the Great with twenty-six readings each. It is safe to say that Augustine has influenced modern Christianity to such an extent that it isn't possible to imagine it without him. With so much said by him, and about him, what can I possibly say that will add anything?

His contribution as Doctor of the Church has this incredible entry. Or here for information on his biography. Clicking here will illustrate the hopelessness of my situation. What can be said about the man who said everything?

113 Books including The City of God and the ever popular Confessions.

218 Letters look at the sidebar on the left for the list.

500 and up Sermons Here is 10. Can you do it?

He was born on November 13, 354 in Tagaste, Numidia, North Africa. His father was a pagan, and his mother was a Christian. Augustine was without doubt the most incredible person anyone who knew him, had ever met. He was lusty, and determined, loving, and tricky. Tricky? Yeah, play this little scene out.
(Augustine and Monica, mom, on the docks.)
St. Augustine: Okay mom, I'll stay here and marry a nice girl. I'll give up my concubine of 15 years and my son. Let me just go on board this boat and tell some people goodbye.

St. Monica: Sure, son.

(St. Augustine gets on the boat and it takes off for Rome. Just as he planned.)

It would be possible to go on and on and on about Augustine's life, because he went on and on and on about it, too. The sheer volume of his output is intimidating.

Yet! And this is very important. Yet, when this horrifying heresy was kicking around, Augustine joined it for 9 years. Manichaean.

At one point, the God of Light sends a representative to battle with the attacking powers of Darkness, which include the Demon of Greed. The original man is armed with five different shields of light, which he loses to the forces of darkness in the ensuing battle. A call is then issued from the world of Light to the Original Man ("call" thus becomes a Manichaean deity), and an answer ("answer" becoming another Manichaean deity) returns from the Original Man to the world of Light. The myth continues with many details of how light is captured into the world of matter, and eventually liberated by entrapping some great demons and causing them to become sexually aroused by "Twelve Virgins of Light", and expelling, against their will, the light from within their bodies. The light, though, is again entrapped in the world of darkness and matter, and the myth continues, eventually arriving to the creation of living beings in the material world, Adam and Eve, and Jesus appearing at the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden. From Wikipedia.

Wow. Personally, I am not turned on by that at all. It took a few years, but eventually a Bishop named Fausto slipped up somehow and couldn't answer some of Augustine's questions, and that was the end of that.

Thankfully, Augustine got involved, was Baptized by St. Ambrose, and then jumped directly into the fray by writing all these things against Donatists and Manichaeans.

Am I the only one noticing that these heresies don't seem to be gone even today? It's not hard to find people who say Jesus was a good man, a great man, but not God. That is Arianism. Then there are the modern Manichaeans with the Peoples Temple, and the mass suicides. UFO religion is rather Manichaean, I think. And the Donatists. Well, they said, if you buckled under during the persecution, then you can't be a priest anymore, or even come to church. Enough said.

Now, I'm going to quote from a Christmas Sermon by St. Augustine, because it is beautiful.

My brethren, what miracles! What prodigies!
The laws of nature are changed in the case of man.
God is born.
A virgin becomes pregnant with man.
The Word of God marries the woman
who knows no man. She is now at the same
time both mother and virgin. She becomes
a mother, yet she remains a virgin.
The virgin bears a son, yet she does
not know man;
she remains untouched,
yet she is not barren.