Saint Augustine of Hippo stands as one of the greatest and most influential of Christian theologians. "It may be safely predicted, that while the mind of human being yearns for knowledge, and his/her heart seeks rest, the book, "The Confessions of Saint Augustine." will retain that foremost place in the world's literature which it has secured by its sublime outpourings of devotion and profound philosophical spirit."

-   THE  EXAMINED  LIFE   -   [ The Confessions changes focus at this point and becomes more philosophical and theological. Here we begin to hear the self-examination of the Bishop of Hippo and his interpretation of the nature of knowledge and of creation itself. ]

Let me know you, Lord, who know me; let me know you even as I am known. O Strength of my soul, enter it and make it fit for you, that you may enjoy it without spot or wrinkle. This is my hope; therefore I speak, and in this hope I rejoice when I rightly rejoice. The less other things of this life deserve our sorrow, the more we weep for them; and the more they ought to be sorrowed for, less people weep for them. For behold, you love truth and he who knows the truth comes to the light. This I would do in my heart before you in this confession and in my writing before many witnesses.

What is there in me that could be hidden from you, O Lord, to whose eyes the depths of man's conscience is bare, even though I did not confess it? I might hide you from myself, but not myself from you. But now my groaning bear witness that I am displeased with myself and that you shine brightly and are pleasing, beloved and desired. I am ashamed of myself and renounce myself, and choose you, for I can neither please you nor myself except in you.

Therefore I am open to you, Lord, with all that I am and whatever benefit may come from my confession to you, I have spoken. I do not confess merely with words and freshly sounds, but with the words of my soul and the cry of my thoughts which your ears knows. For when I am wicked, confession to you is nothing more than to be displeased with myself. But when I am truly devout, it is to ascribe glory to you; because you, Lord, bless the godly, but first you justify him who is ungodly? [ From Romans 4:5 Augustine understands justifico in the sense of making actually just (righteous) he recognizes the possibility of interpreting the word in the sense of being reckoned just, but uniformly adopts the former interpretation. ]  

My confession then, O my God, is made both silently and yet not silently, for in sound it is silent, but in affection, it cries aloud. For I neither utter any right thing to others which you have not already heard from me, nor do you hear any such things from me which you have not first said to me.

But what do I have to do with peoples that they should hear my confessions, as if they could heal all my infirmities? They are a race, curious to know the lives of others, slow to amend their own. Why do they seek to hear from me what I am, who will not hear from you what they themselves are? And how do they know, when from me they hear of myself, whether I speak the truth, since no man knows what is in man, but the spirit of man which is in him? But if they heard from you about themselves, they cannot say, "The Lord lies." For what is it to hear from you of themselves, but to know themselves? But because charity believes all things - at least among those whom it knits together with itself as one - I, too, Lord, will confess to you in such a way that peoples may hear, though I cannot prove to them that my confession is true; yet those whose ears are opened to me by charity will believe me.

But, O my inmost Physician, make plain to me what benefit I may gain by doing it. You have forgiven and covered my past sins that you might make me happy in you, changing my soul by faith and your sacrament. When my confessions of them are read and heard, they stir up the heart. No longer does it sleep in despair and say "I cannot" but awakes in the love of your mercy and the sweetness of your grace, by which whoever is weak is made strong, when he becomes conscious of his own weakness by it. And the good delight to hear of the past evils of those who are now freed from them - not because they are evils, but because they were no longer are.

What does it profit me, O Lord my God, what does this book gain me, to confess to peoples in your presence what I now am? My conscience confesses daily to you, trusting more in the hope of your mercy than in its own innocence. For I have seen and spoken of the fruit of knowing what I have been, but what I now am, at the very time of making these confessions, various people want to know, both those who have known me and those who have not, who have heard from me or of me. But their ear is not at my heart, where I am whatever I am. They wish to hear me confess what I am within, where neither their eye, nor ear, nor understanding can read. They wish it, ready to believe it - but will they know? For charity which makes them good tells them that I do not lie in my confessions, and charity in them believes me.

But for what good purpose do they wish to hear this? Do they want to rejoice with me when they hear how near by your grace I approach to you? Do they wish to pray for me when they hear how much I am held back by my own weight? To such I will disclosed myself? [ This book has been called one of the most honest soul inventories extant from the ancient world ] For it is no little gain. O Lord my God, that thanks should be given to you on our behalf, and that you should be entreated for us. Let the brotherly soul love in me what you teach is to be loved, and lament in me what you teach is to be lamented. Let it be brotherly, not an alien soul - not one of those strange children, whose mouth speaks vanity, and whose right hand is the hand of falsehood. But let it be the soul of my brethren who, when they approve, rejoice for me, and when they disapprove, are sorry for me; because whether they approve or disapprove, they love me.

To such I will disclose myself; they will breathe freely at my good deeds, sigh for my ill. My good deeds are your appointments and your gifts. My evil ones are my offences and your judgements. Let them breathe freely at the one and sigh at the other. Let hymns and weeping go up into your sight from the hearts of my brethren, your censers. [ The praying Christian is pictured as a thurible, a vessel for burning incense in the Temple or in the Church. Cf. Psalm 141:2 - "Let my prayer be counted as incense before thee." ] And be pleased, O Lord, with the incense of your holy temple; have mercy on me according to your great mercy for your own name's sake. And do not on my account leave what you have begun in me, but perfect my imperfections.

This is the fruit, the profit of my confession of what I am, not of what I have been: to confess this, not only before you, in a secret exultation with trembling, and a secret sorrow with hope, but in the ears of the believing sons of men, sharers of my joy, partners in my mortality, my fellow citizens and fellow pilgrims, who have gone before me, and are to follow on - companions of my way. These are your servants, my brethren, who are your sons by your will. They are my masters, whom you command me to serve if I would live with you and in you. But this, your Word, would mean little to me if it only commanded by speaking, without going before in action. This then I do in deed and word. This I do under your wings, for it would be too great a peril if my soul were not subjected to you under your wings and my infirmities known to you. I am but a little one, but my Father ever lives, and my Guardian is sufficient for me. For he is the same who gave me life and defends me, and you yourself are all my good. You, Almighty One are with me, yes, even before I am with you. To those then whom you command me to serve I will show, not what I have been, but what I now am, and what I continue to be. But I do not judge myself. Thus, therefore would I be heard.

You, Lord, are my judge, because, although no man knows the things of a man but the spirit of a man which is in him, yet there is something of man which the spirit of man that is in him, itself, does not know. But you, Lord know him completely, for you made him. And although I despise myself in your sight and account myself dust and ashes, I know something of you which I do not know of myself. Truly, now we see through a glass darkly, not face to face as yet. As long, then, as I am absent from you, I am more present with myself than with you. And I know that you cannot be violated, but I do not know which temptations I can resist and which I cannot. There is hope, because you are faithful, who will not allow us to be tempted beyond our ability; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, so that we may be able to bear it. I will confess then what I know of myself, I will confess also what I do not know of myself. What I know of myself I know by your light shinning upon me; and what I do not know of myself, I continue not to know until my darkness becomes as the noonday in the light of your countenance.

I love you, Lord, without any doubt, but with assured certainty. You have stricken my heart with your Word, and I love you. Yes, also, heaven and earth and all that is in them on every side bid me to love you. They will not cease to say so to everyone, so that they are without excuse. But more profoundly, you will have mercy on whom you will have mercy, and compassion on whom you will have compassion. Otherwise, the heaven and the earth speak your praises to deaf ears.

But what do I love when I love you? Not the beauty of bodies, nor the fair harmony of time, nor the brightness of the light, so gladsome to our eyes; not the sweet melodies of various songs, nor the fragrant smell of flowers and ointments and spices; not manna and honey; not the limbs that physical love likes to embrace. It is none of these that I love my God. Yet I love a kind of light, a kind of melody, a kind of fragrance, a kind of food, and a kind of embrace when I love my God: the light, the melody, the fragrance, the food, and the embrace of the inner man, where there shines into my soul what space cannot contain, and there sounds, what time cannot carry away. I breathe a fragrance which no breeze scatters, and I taste there what is not consumed by eating; and there I lie in the embrace that no satiety can ever separate. This is what I love when I love my God.

And what is it? I asked the earth, and it answered me, "I am not he." And whatever is in the earth confessed the same. I asked the sea and its deeps, and the living, creeping things, and they answered, "We are not your God; seek him above us." I asked the moving air; and the whole air with its inhabitants answered, "Anaximenes was deceived; I am not God." [ From Cicero: "After Anaximander came Anaximenes, who taught that the air is God." On the Nature of the Gods. ] I asked the heavens, sun, moon, stars. "No," say they, "we are not the God whom you seek." And I replied to all the things that throng about the senses of my flesh, "you have told me of my God, that you are not he. Tell me something of him." And they cried, "he made us."

My questioning of them was my thoughts about them, and their form of beauty gave the answer. And I turned myself to myself and said to myself, "What are you?" And I answer, "A man." And behold, in me there appear both soul and body, one outside and the other within. By which of these should I seek my God? I had sought him in the body from earth to heaven, as far as I could send my eyesight as messengers. But the better part is the inner, for to it, as to a ruler and judge, all the bodily messengers reported the answers of heaven and earth and all things in them, who said, "We are not God, but he made us. "These things my inner man knew by means of the outer. I, the inner man, knew them. I, the mind, knew them through the senses of my body. I asked the whole frame of the world about my God; and it answered me, "I am not he, but he made me."

Is not this outward appearance visible to all who have use of their senses? Why then does it not say the same thing to all? Animals small and great see it, but they cannot ask it anything, because their senses are not endowed with reason, so they cannot judge what they see. But men can ask, so that the invisible things of God may be clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made. But in loving them, they are brought into subjection to them, and subjects cannot judge. [ Plotinus said that to admire, to take as an object of pursuit anything different from one's own nature, is to acknowledge one's inferiority to it. ] Nor do these things answer unless the questioners can judge.

The creatures do not change their voice, they do not appear one way to this man, another to that; but appearing the same way to both, they are dumb to one and speak to the other. Rather, they speak to all, but only those understand who compare the voice received externally with the internal truth. For truth says to me, "Neither heaven nor earth nor any other body is your God." This, their very nature says to him who sees them, "they are a mass; a mass is less in part than in the whole." Now I speak to you, O my soul, you are my better part, for you quicken the whole mass of my body, giving it life. Nobody can give life to a body. But your God is the Life of your life.

What do I do, then, when I love my God? Who is he who is so high above my soul? By my very soul I will ascend to him. I will soar beyond that power by which I am united to my body, filling its whole frame with life. But I do not find God by that power, for then, so could horse and mule that have no understanding find him for it is the same power by which their bodies live. [ The Latin word is anima - physical life. Augustine sees animals as possessing the interior sensus which correlates the data of sense perception, but lacks ratio - the reasons, which forms judgments. ] But there is another power, not only that by which I am made alive, but that, too, by which I imbue my flesh with sense, which the Lord has made for me, commanding the eye not to hear and the ear not to see; but commanding the eye that I should see through it, and the ear that I should hear through it, and the several other senses, what is to each their own proper places and functions. Through these different senses, I, as a single mind, act. I will go beyond this power of mine, too, for the horse and mule also have this power, for they also perceive through their bodily senses.

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -