Inspiring Christian Lives

St Augustine of Hippo, 354-430 A.D

Rome c. 400
In what does our ultimate happiness consist? A young man burns with this question.

He sought it in reading, study and philosophy - but the answer was not there.

He sought it in intellectual esteem and prizes, in being a model student, top of every class - but the answer was not there.

He sought it in the sophisticated, smart, sensual, exciting, life of wit and society - but the answer was not there.

He sought it in the fashionable and easy going attitudes of the day - but it was not there.

He sought it in fame and fortune - but it was not there.

He sought it by abandoning himself to the pursuit of pleasure at all costs, plunging into the wild and drunken orgies of the Roman Carnival, 'where shameful love bubbled around like boiling oil' - but the answer was not there.

He sought it in friendship - but his friend died, and so - it was not there.

He sought it in the love of a woman - but it was not there.

Frustrated at his lack of a satisfying and sustaining answer he ventured to a garden, threw himself down and cried out: "How long, how long shall this be? It is always tomorrow, and tomorrow. Why not an end to my frustration?" Then, in the garden, he heard a child singing a nursery rhyme: "Take up and read, take up and read". Augustine stretched out his hand to a book he had brought with him. It was St Paul's letters. He took it up, opened it at random, and read, "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh to fulfil its lusts." Suddenly, all was quiet, calm came over his soul. He knew his decision had been made and that he now had the power to execute it. No more trouble, the storms of his spirit had passed, all was calm. Augustine arose from where he lay, entered the Church and was guided by one of the greatest teachers in its history, St Ambrose. Within years, Augustine became a priest, a bishop, a defender of the faith against its intellectual enemies and a rebuilder of the Church in true humility and poverty of spirit. In his most famous work, The Confessions, he wrote "You have made us, O lord, for yourself, and our heart shall find no rest until it rests in You". He recognised that God alone could satisfy his hunger; and, he recognised, more importantly, that the very desire for God, for Truth, for Justice, for Beauty, was the presence of God within him. He dared to follow that desire to wherever it would take him, and not to let it settle and on lesser things, created things; he dared to follow that sense of incompletion to wherever it might take him, to keep questioning, to keep thinking and to keep searching, whatever the cost. He took the risk of adventure, took the gamble of faith and became one of the greatest witnesses to the Christian faith in the history of the Church.