Understanding Augustine

post by Mama H.

  As part of our history/literature/theology studies (just how does one really separate them ?) we just finished up reading Augustine's "Confessions" yesterday.

The work is divided into Books and each book into chapters.  Many chapters have further divisions, but the chapters are really quite short, often only a paragraph long.
It is an easy read in terms breaking it into bite-sized pieces, though it is a very thoughtful work, and will challenge your innermost thoughts, always pointing you back to the Scriptures, which I loved!

Here are a few quotes (from the latter part of the work) that really stood out to us as we read them :

Book 10, chapter 23 :
(He has been talking about finding happiness in the truth and the misery of trying to find any happiness in anything but the Truth alone)
" Thus, thus, truly thus:  the human mind so blind and sick, so base and ill-mannered, desires to lie hidden, but does not wish that anything should be hidden from it.  And yet the opposite is what happens - the mind itself is not hidden from the truth, but the truth is hidden from it.  Yet even so, for all its wretchedness, it still prefers to rejoice in truth rather than in known falsehoods.  It will, then, be happy only when, without other distractions, it comes to rejoice in that single Truth through which all things else are true."

Book 10, chapter 26 :
(on listening to and learning from God)
"He is thy best servant who does not look to hear from thee what he himself wills, but who wills rather to will what he hears from thee."

Also, from Book 10, chapter 29 :
"My whole hope is in thy exceeding great mercy - and that alone.  Give what thou commandest and command what thou wilt. .....  For he loves thee too little who loves along with thee anything else that he does not love for thy sake, O Love, who dost burn forever and art never quenched.  O Love, O my God, enkindle me!  Thou commandest continence; give what thou commandest and command what thou wilt."

We are wrapping up our studies of the barbarian invasions throughout Europe, moving on to the viking explorers, the spread of Christianity in England and Ireland, and into the Middle ages.  What a fascinating period!

May God bless your reading!