St. Augustine, Doctor, Bishop, Writer, and All Around Big Guy

I'm sure that if I scrounge around in my archives I can find the nonsense I wrote about St. Augustine as a DOCTOR of the church. Those were the days of trying to find my niche. It seems the Rule of Benedict is my nice. The more I do it, the more I like it. But, today belongs to Augustine, so let's have a go at him.

The picture is by Sandro Botticelli, and I lifted it off the Wikipedia article on St. Augustine. There are some 900 extant sermons by Augustine. Lord knows he wrote enough other letters and refutations of heresy, that one wonders if perhaps the divine was indeed in his writing hand -- just to keep up with the writers cramp!

In the meantime of course he was living in a sinful, confused, chaotic world, rather like our own. They all feared invasion, which of course came. They all feared other Catholic Christians, which of course in those days, was serious enough to get you killed if you were not very, very careful, indeed. He had to take care of the influx of refugees from Italy as the barbarians were making life in Italy ever more unpleasant. And he still found time to write all that he wrote, plus 900 sermons!!!!!!!

So out of all of that, why did certain aspects of the church hierarchy of the past (or is it) seize upon a few of his statements that eventually gave rise to Jansenism and Calvinsism? The body is bad -- a perversion of Augustine. We are either damned or saved from the start -- a perversion of Augustine. Yet, tonight in the LOTH the antiphon for the Maginficat says,

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you. You called, you shouted and you shattered my deafness.

Those are not the words of a man who was filled with judgment and ire. Those are the words of a man amazed at the sheer love of God! If we are filled with such love, we will not judge either.