Homily - 28 August 2023 - The Solemnity of Saint Augustine of Hippo

Dear brothers and sisters,

It is indeed right and just that tonight we have gathered to rejoice in the gift of so great a patron as Saint Augustine of Hippo. It is fitting that we have gathered at the altar to render thanks to God for so great an intercessor as Saint Augustine of Hippo. But what does it mean to have a patron and intercessor in heaven, especially one like the Doctor of Grace?

A statue of St. Augustine with a kukui nut and maile lei, Hawaiian signs of affection.

Much of our society is so dominated by a materialistic mindset to the extent that when we think of patronage, we probably only think of patronizing a business. While it may not be common now, it was once common for shopkeepers to thank customers for their patronage. This understanding of patron began shortly before the nineteenth century, but would have been quite unknown for most of the last two and half millennia or more.

Our English word patron comes from the Latin patronus, meaning defender or protector, which comes from pater, meaning father. Historically, a patron was one who defended and protected someone as a father would defend and protect his child. It is in this sense that the Church adopted the word in reference to the saints of God and their relationship with the Church on earth.

Consequently, it became customary to choose a heavenly patron based on a shared aspect of life. Such patronage is founded in Christian love. As Saint John reminds us, “Beloved let us love one another, because love is of God” (I John 4:7). Loving one another requires that we look after one another’s good and strive to bring about what is good for each other. This mission of love does not end with physical death, but becomes even more important for the Saints who look upon the Face of God; they love those whom God loves.

Saint Augustine became the patron of brewers because he enjoyed partying as a young man; he became the patron of printers and theologians because of his voluminous spiritual and theological writings as an older man. His patronage, however, does not stop there; he is also the patron of several cities, either because of the presence of his relics or because they bear his name. What is more, he is our patron, as well.

After the Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal throughout the Roman Empire in a.d. 313, churches were built over the tombs of the martyrs and therefore received the names of those whose tombs they marked. This practice spread beyond the tombs of the martyrs to the tombs of other early Christians who had a reputation of holiness. As the number of Christians increased and more churches were needed, these, too, were named after the saints, even if they were not built over their tombs.

In 1875, our parish and church were dedicated first of all to God, but also to Saint Augustine of Hippo, who lived a most remarkable life of sin, but also an extraordinarily holy life after his heartfelt conversion. Because of his association with our church and parish, Saint Augustine has a particular fatherly care for us as our heavenly defender and protector. His patronage over us is something we too often overlook and under appreciate.

While we may not be brewers, printers, or theologians, we can nevertheless relate to Saint Augustine because he is not that different from us. He fell into a life of sin and resisted the call to repentance because he enjoyed his sinful way of life. More importantly, though, he knew the joy that comes from repentance and being raised up again by the Lord Jesus. Like us, Saint Augustine searched for truth and found it in Christ. He felt overwhelmed by his many duties. And he knew the beauty of a life lived for others and for God. In all of this, he is a man like us who knows well what our lives are like. He is a perfect patron for us precisely because he is very much like us. We do well, then, to call upon his intercession in every aspect of our daily lives.

Saint Augustine himself frequently called upon the intercession of the saints, especially the martyrs, and asked them to pray for him to God. Among his many writings, we find these words: “At the Lord’s table we do not commemorate martyrs in the same way that we do others who rest in peace so as to pray for them, but rather that they may pray for us that we may follow in their footsteps.”[1] As a loving father desires to look after the needs his children, so does Saint Augustine desire to look after us with a love that imitates the goodness of God (cf. I John 4:11).

I urge you, then, dear brothers and sisters, to turn to Saint Augustine in all of your daily needs. Ask his prayers in the midst of your troubles. When you are in doubt, ask him to help you see the truth. When you are sorrowing, ask him to comfort you and assure you of the goodness of God. Ask him to share with you his love of the Scriptures. Above all, ask him to help you meditate on the mysteries of God and teach you the wisdom of what he has learned (cf. Sirach 39:7-8). If you do, Saint Augustine will teach you how to live in love and will lead you to look upon the Face of God, who is love itself (cf. I John 4:8, 12). Amen.

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[1] Saint Augustine of Hippo, Homilies on John, 84.

Homily - 26 August 2023 - The TWenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)

 Dear brothers and sisters,

Throughout the course of the liturgical year, the Church celebrates the life of the Savior and organizes the year around his life. The year begins with the anticipation of his return in glory at the end of all things and with the joy of his first coming at Bethlehem in the season of Advent; it ends with the celebration of his universal and cosmic kingship, almost as if with two identical spiritual bookends. In between these we commemorate his Birth, Passion, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension in the seasons of Christmas, Lent, and Easter. Throughout the rest of the year we celebrate other events in his life and ministry, particularly his healings and his teaching. All of this is done to enable us to experience his life in its fullness.

But because the Saints of God have been inserted into the Mystical Body of Christ and are inseparable from their Head, the Church rightly commemorates these holy men and women throughout the liturgical year, usually on the anniversaries of their earthly deaths. The Church does this in the midst of her celebration of the various events and aspects in the life of the Lord Jesus because they are part of his Body. Ordinarily, today would be one such day, the memorial of Saint Monica, the mother of Saint Augustine of Hippo. Why, then, do we not commemorate Saint Monica in today’s celebration of the Holy Mass?

The answer has to do with the rankings assigned to the different liturgical celebrations, ranging from memorials both optional and obligatory, feasts, and solemnities, first of the saints and then of the Lord. Sundays are always observed as solemnities and so trump every day except other solemnities that outrank them, such as the Solemnity of Christmas. Before we consider solemnities, let us first return to Saint Monica (she is too import to simply skip over).

Follower of Master of Guillebert de Mets, Saint Augustine and Saint Monica

From a Book of Hours, MS M 357, fol. 194r

Sometime about the year 332, Monica was born in the north African city of Thagaste, in what is today Souk Ahras, Algeria. She married Patricius, who was a pagan, a member of the city senate, and together they had three children: Augustine, Navigius, and Perpetua. Monica was a Christian but Patricius would not consent to have the children baptized, which caused her some distress.

When Augustine was seventeen, he left home to study rhetoric at Madauros. He later moved to Carthage, then to Rome, and later to Milan where his life irrevocably change, both for his own benefit and for ours. While in Carthage, he abandoned the Christian faith Monica had taught him and began to follow a dualistic philosophy that effectively taught there exists a battle between a good god and an evil god. Monica became even more distraught when Augustine habitually took up a concubine with whom he cohabited for many years, with whom he had a son, Adeodatus.

Year after year, Monica poured out her heart to God, begging for the conversion of her son to the life of faith. She followed Augustine everywhere, becoming something of the epitome of the overbearing mother. She asked many people for help in bringing her Son out of his sinful way of life, including the Bishop of Milan whom she implored to meet with her son and talk him out of his sinfulness. The bishop refused, knowing Augustine was not yet ready for such a conversion. But, as Augustine tells us,

She pressed him with more begging and with floods of tears, asking him to see me and debate with me. He was now irritated and a little vexed and said, “Go away from me; as you live, it cannot be that the son of these tears should perish.” In her conversations with me she often used to recall that she had taken these words as if they sounded from heaven.[1]

For seventeen years, Monica’s tears flowed freely on behalf of her son and her prayers were at last answered. Augustine sent his concubine away, received baptism, and afterwards lived a holy life, becoming one of the greatest and most important saints the Church has known. Monica died at the Roman port of Ostia in 387.

 

Whenever we turn to the example of Saint Monica, we are reminded of

 

How many difficulties there are also today in family relations and how many mothers are in anguish at seeing their children setting out on wrong paths! Monica, a woman whose faith was wise and sound, invites them not to lose heart but to persevere in their mission as wives and mothers, keeping firm their trust in God and clinging with perseverance to prayer.[2]

 

However painful these situations may be, Saint Monica reminds us there is always hope that the children of many tears should not perish. Mothers, particularly, can always look to Saint Monica for an example of living the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and love in the most difficult of circumstances.

 

The Church remembers her son and our patron the day after she remembers Saint Monica. For most of the Church, the liturgical commemoration of a Saint is a memorial, but because he is our patron his day here rises to a solemnity. What does this mean for us here at St. Augustine’s Parish?

 

In our society today, we tend to associate solemnities with somberness and sobriety. While the origin of the word solemn is uncertain, it seems to be connected with the Proto-Indo-European word sol, meaning “well-kept.” In Latin, solemn took on the characteristics of an annual, formal, religious ceremony.

Liturgically speaking, when we observe a solemnity the finest appointments that a church has should be used, from altar cloths and candlesticks to chalices and books. When the commemoration of a saint is raised to a solemnity, a second reading is added. Six candlesticks can be used instead of two or four. Flowers may adorn the sanctuary. A higher level of music can be employed. In short, whatever can be done to keep the day well should be done. This ought to be true both within the physical body of the church building, as well as within the spiritual body of our lives. To keep a solemnity well is to live the day differently than other days. The medieval Church knew this; we have regrettably forgotten it.

If we consider the true purpose of a festive communal celebration, as should happen on a solemnity, we know 

the feast also echoes man's vital needs, and is deeply rooted in his longing for the transcendent. The feast, with its manifestations of joy and rejoicing, is an affirmation of the value of life and creation. The feast is also an expression of integral freedom and of man's tendency towards true happiness, with its interruption of daily routine, formal conventions, and of the need to earn a living… As a social moment, the feast is an occasion to strengthen family relations and to make new contacts.[3]

We can, perhaps, summarize this basic mindset behind the true understanding of celebration more simply:

To celebrate a feast is to allow man to participate in God's lordship over creation, and in His active "rest," rather than in any form of laziness. It is an expression of simple joy, rather than unlimited selfishness. It is an expression of true liberty rather than an occasion for ambiguous amusement which creates new and more subtle forms of enslavement.[4]

Both Saint Monica and Saint Augustine found this expression of true liberty and of simple joy here on earth by remaining close to the Lord. May their examples and intercession help us to find it here, as well, so we might eternally enjoy its fullness with them before the Face of God. Amen.

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[1] Saint Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, III.xii.21.

[2] Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Address, 27 August 2006.

[3] Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy, 232.

[4] Ibid., 233.

Homily for the Solemnity of Saint Augustine of Hippo

The Solemnity of Saint Augustine of Hippo, Bishop and Doctor

Dear brothers and sisters,

It is a curious thing that on this day on which we celebrate our heavenly patron and guide for the Christian life that Mother Church has us hear these words of the Lord Jesus: “Do not be called ‘Rabbi.’ You have but one teacher, and you are all brothers” (Matthew 23:8). Centuries ago, Saint Augustine of Hippo was given the title of Doctor of the Church, “doctor” being the Latin word for “teacher.” If we have but one teacher, Christ Jesus, how are we to make sense of this?

There are some today who take Jesus’ words in this passage to great extremes. They go so far as to say that when Jesus says, “Call no one earth your father,” they insist that priests should not be called father, but then they have no problem referring to their male parent as dad or papa, both of which simply mean father. They hyper-focus on that one line in this passage, but have no difficulty referring to the person who overseas their medical care as doctor, which, again, simply means teacher.

To take Jesus’ words to such an extreme is to ignore much of the rest of the New Testament, which, of course, is the inspired word of God. Saint Paul, for example, calls himself “a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth” (I Timothy 2:7)” and says he “was appointed a preacher and teacher” (II Timothy1:11). Saint Paul also makes it clear that he is not the only teacher of the faith when he says “God has appointed in the Church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers” (I Corinthians 12:28) and that “his gifts were that some should apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry” (Ephesians 4:11). When Jesus says, “Do not be called ‘Rabbi’ [teacher],” he is not speaking literally but hyperbolically.

The same is true when Jesus says, “Call no one on earth your father,” as we clearly see in the writings of Saint Paul. The Apostle calls Saint Timothy “my beloved and faithful child in the Lord” (I Corinthians 4:17). Writing to the Church in Corinth, Saint Paul says to them, “I became your Father in Christ Jesus through the Gospel” (I Corinthians 4:15). Saint Paul and Saint John both speak in similar ways of the people to whom they write.

Jesus does not mean we should literally call no person on earth teacher or father or master; what he means is to place no person on earth higher than God. The Church, then, honors Saint Augustine with the title “Doctor of the Church” because through his teaching of the Christian faith and through the witness of his holy life he strove “to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12-13). In the Litany of Saint Augustine, we call him “our father” because he passes the faith on to give us and gives us life through this faith.

These sixteen centuries later, Saint Augustine’s voluminous words, so rooted in the Sacred Scriptures and the experience of life, remain a sure path by which we can steadily and surely approach “the heavenly Jerusalem, and countless angels in festal gathering” (Hebrews 12:23). If Saint Augustine, assisted by God’s grace, could at last make his way to the great wedding banquet of the Lamb then you and I can do the same. What do I mean?

To grasp the full import of what it means that Augustine is now counted among the greatest of the saints, we have to recall something of his life.

Augustine’s mother, St. Monica, reared him in the Catholic faith, but he did not follow her example. A lively, witty and exuberant teenager, Augustine undertook the study of rhetoric, giving brilliant performance and showing enormous promise. He loved life and its pleasures, displayed a profound gift for friendship, experienced passionate love, adored the theater, sought fun and entertainment. In Carthage, where he went to study, he fell in love with a girl. Since she was of a lower social class, he took her as his concubine, but did not marry. They had a son, Adeodatus (whose name means “God-given”). Augustine, a father at 19, remained faithful to his common-law wife and took responsibility for the “family” ménage. On reading Cicero's Hortensius, Augustine’s whole way of seeing the world experienced a change. Happiness, Cicero taught him, consists of things that do not perish: wisdom, truth, virtue. Augustine decided to dedicate his whole life to their pursuit.

 

Having been reared in a Christian house, Augustine turned first to the Bible. He was not prepared to receive the wisdom of Sacred Scripture, however, and found holy writ gross and illogical. He then joined the sect of the Manichees (a group dedicated to a basically dualistic form of eclectic esoterism). Returning to Thagaste, he opened a school of “grammar” and rhetoric with the help of a benefactor, but the life he led did not please him, so he returned to   Carthage with hope for a better future there. He continued to be dissatisfied. His thirst for truth was not slaked by the Manichaean doctrine. The young and promising rhetor went in search of new shores, and in 382, he moved to Rome with his companion and son, without informing his mother, who had reached Carthage in the meantime. In the Imperial city, however, Augustine maintained his contacts with the Manichaeans, from whom he received financial support and encouragement… His career began to advance full-sail, and in 384 he earned the chair of rhetoric in Milan. Nevertheless, his inner turmoil continued to torment him.

 

Augustine’s ambition is satiated at Milan, but his heart continued restless. To refine his ars oratoria, he listened to the sermons of Bishop Ambrose. He wanted to overwhelm Ambrose’s dialectics, and instead the words of the Bishop touched him to the quick. Meanwhile, his mother Monica came to join him in Milan, and she accompanied him with her prayers. Augustine grew ever closer to the Catholic Church, and entered the catechumenate. Desiring a Christian wife, he sent his concubine to Africa. Still troubled, Augustine devoured philosophical texts and plunged into Sacred Scripture. Tempted by the experience of Greek thinkers, and attracted to the lifestyle of Christian ascetics, he cannot make up his mind. One day in August, 386,  disoriented and confused, weeping in a garden, he seemed to hear a voice: Tolle! Lege! (which means, “Pick it up and read”). He considered the voice an invitation to turn to Paul’s letters, a copy of which was on a nearby table, and opened them at random. “"Let's trade honestly, as in the daytime, not in the midst of orgies and drunkenness, not among lusts and impurities, not in litigation and jealousy. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ instead of letting go of the fleshly desires (Rm 13, 13-14).” The lines were decisive for him. He decided to change his life and to devote himself to God. He was baptized by Ambrose in the night between April 24 and 25, 387, and wishing to return to Africa, travels to Rome to embark from the port city, Ostia, where his mother, Monica, died before taking ship.

 

Augustine founded his first community in his hometown, Thagaste. Between the end of 390 and the beginning of 391, he found himself perchance in Hippo, in the basilica where Bishop Valerius was talking to his faithful about the need for a priest in his diocese. Alerted to his presence among them, the congregation pushes Augustine to the fore, and insists that Valerius ordain him. Though he had been convinced of his calling to live in a vowed religious state, Augustine, studying and meditating on the Scriptures, came to understand that God had else in store for him. He eventually became Bishop of Hippo, succeeding Valerius, and left countless writings behind, in which he carried forward his lifelong project of truth-seeking through faith and reason.[1]

Augustine’s life is a fascinating and there are many ways by which one approach him.

Pope Francis reminds us that Saint Augustine’s life has much to say to us today. In particular, the Bishop of Rome says:

I would like to tell those who feel indifferent to God, to faith, and those who are far from God or who have distanced themselves from him, that we too, with our “distancing” and our “abandonment” of God, that may seem insignificant but are so numerous in our daily life: look into the depths of your heart, look into your own inner depths and ask yourself: do you have a heart that desires something great, or a heart that has been lulled to sleep by things? Has your heart preserved the restlessness of seeking or have you let it be suffocated by things that end by hardening it? God awaits you, he seeks you; how do you respond to him? Are you aware of the situation of your soul? Or have you nodded off? Do you believe God is waiting for you…?[2]

Let us not nod off or ignore or be afraid of the deepest longings of hearts, of the restlessness of our hearts. Let us instead, with Saint Augustine as our teacher and father, wrestle with them until we, with Saint Augustine, at last are made perfect by, in, and through the love of God which inflames our hearts (cf. Hebrews 12:23). Amen.

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[1] Vatican News, “St. Augustine, Bishop of Hyppo and Doctor of the Church,” 28 August 2022. Accessed 28 August 2022. Available at https://www.vaticannews.va/en/saints/08/28/st---augustine--bishop-of-hyppo-and-doctor-of-the-church.html?fbclid=IwAR1sSCTkdg-7Ds3fzOEu0-8UYGfaALWpbWskg3MWqC42p9czEjmtpFsl4po.

[2] Pope Francis, Homily, 28 August 2013. Accessed 28 August 2022. Available at https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2013/documents/papa-francesco_20130828_capitolo-sant-agostino.html.

Homily - Saint Augustine on Saint Joseph

The Solemnity of Saint Augustine of Hippo

Dear brothers and sisters,

As we celebrate today this Solemnity of Saint Augustine of Hippo, Bishop and Doctor of the Church, we find ourselves still in the midst of the Year of Saint Joseph. This is a year Pope Francis proclaimed, he said, “to increase our love for this great saint, to encourage us to implore his intercession and to imitate his virtues and his zeal.”[1] With this in mind, I thought it might be good this year to have a look at what our heavenly patron has to say about the one we call Protector of the Holy Church.

Alexandre Cabanel
Detail, Saint Augustine in His Study, 1845

AI do so, in part, taking the lead of the Holy Father. He concluded his Apostolic Letter proclaiming the Year of Saint with a quote from Saint Augustine, who asked, “What they could do, can you not also do?”[2] What is it Saint Augustine saw in Saint Joseph that we can also do?

During Saint Augustine’s lifetime, there were some who took offense that the genealogy of Jesus was given not through Mary, but through Joseph. The reason they were offended is because, as we know, Joseph is not the natural father of Jesus, as if this somehow made him less of a father to the Son of God. But Saint Augustine would have nothing to do with this line of thinking; instead, he launched into a staunch defense of Saint Joseph.

While some laughed at Joseph for having been betrothed to a woman who appeared to be an adulteress, Saint Augustine saw Joseph’s response to the news of Mary’s pregnancy as a mark of his virtue. Augustine said:

He [Joseph] is upset as a husband, of course, but as a just man he does not fall into a rage. This man is credited with such a keen sense of justice, that he would neither agree to have an adulteress as his wife, nor venture to punish her by publicizing the matter. He “wished,” it says, “to break off the engagement quietly;” he was unwilling not only to punish her, but even to put her to shame.[3]

In Joseph’s intentions, there is much to learn for our society, which is so eager to shame others and to publicize one another’s private sins. Against this temptation, Saint Augustine teaches us that “those sins … are to be rebuked in front of everybody which are committed in front of everybody,” but “those which are committed less publicly are to be rebuked less publicly. Distinguish between the occasions, and scripture is at peace with itself.”[4] Joseph, then, teaches us to be just, humble, and gentle.

Before saying anything more here, we have to point out that Joseph was incorrect in his initial assessment of the situation. As the angel would reveal to him, Mary had not committed adultery but remained faithful to Joseph; she did not conceive through another man, bur through the Holy Spirit. Reflecting on this revelation, Saint Augustine said, “So while he [Joseph] was made uneasy by human weakness, he was reassured by divine authority.”[5] In effect, he reminds us that we should trust in God more than we trust in our own assessments.

From this observation, Saint Augustine returned to the argument of his opponents who claimed it was not right that the genealogy of Jesus be traced through Joseph.

Augustine pointed out it was this same divine authority who, through the angel, called Joseph the husband of Mary (cf. Matthew 1:20-21). Moreover, Joseph was commanded “to give the child a name, even though it was not born of his own seed,” which Augustine sees as proof that Joseph “is not deprived of his paternal authority.”[6]

Just in case these arguments are not enough for someone to stop questioning the role of Joseph as father to Jesus, Saint Augustine also notes that “the Virgin Mary herself, perfectly aware that she had not conceived Christ by Joseph’s conjugal embrace, still calls him Christ’s father” when she and Joseph found him in the Temple (cf. Luke 2:48).[7] To those who argue that Jesus denied being Joseph’s son when he asked them, “Did you not know I had to be about my Father’s business?,” Augustine points out that Saint Luke tells us Jesus “was obedient to them,” not just to Mary, but to Joseph, as well (Luke 2:51).

As if to crown his argument about the fittingness of tracing the genealogy of Jesus through Joseph and not through Mary, Saint Augustine turns his attention to marriage. He says, “So we can’t say that Joseph wasn’t a father, just because he never slept with the mother of the Lord – as though it were lust that made someone into a wife, and not married love.”[8] Augustine goes on from this argument to say that “a man can have two fathers, one who begot him from his seed, the other who adopted him out of love.”[9] Here Augustine highlights the importance of love within a family.

For each of these reasons, Saint Augustine says

It shouldn’t bother us that the ancestry of Christ is reckoned through Joseph and not through Mary; it’s because, just as she was a mother without carnal desire, so he was a father without carnal intercourse… We should allow that his greater purity confirms his fatherhood, or we might find ourselves rebuked by Saint Mary herself.[10]

Jesus, says Saint Augustine, “was born of the Virgin Mary, to the piety and love of Joseph” and so he is rightly called the father of Jesus.[11]

As we celebrate this Solemnity of our great patron, let us ask Saint Augustine to teach us how to imitate Saint Joseph with him and to implore his intercession. May he teach us to be just, humble, and gentle, to trust in God, and to establish our families on the foundation of love. Amen.

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[1] Pope Francis, Patris corde, 7.

[2] Saint Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, VIII.11.27.

[3] Ibid., Sermon 51.9.

[4] Ibid., 82.10.

[5] Ibid., 51.9.

[6] Ibid., 51.16.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid., 51.21.

[9] Ibid., 51.27.

[10] Ibid., 51.30.

[11] Ibid.