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Your Daily Bread21 god will not fail to bring light
This is an address from Pope Benedict XVI’s general audience on St Augustine at Castel Gandolfo on August 25, 2010.
THERE are dear people in the life of each one of us to whom we feel particularly close, some of whom are already in God’s embrace while others still share with us the journey through life.
They are our parents, relatives and teachers; they are the people to whom we have done good or from whom we have received good; they are people on whom we know we can count.
Yet it is important also to have “travelling companions” on the journey of our Christian life.
I am thinking of a spiritual director, a confes- sor, of people with whom it is possible to share one’s own faith experience, but I am also think- ing of the Virgin Mary and the saints.
Everyone must have some saint with whom he or she is on familiar terms, to feel close to with prayer and intercession but also to emulate.
I would therefore like to ask you to become better acquainted with the saints, starting with those you are called after, by reading their life and their writings.
You may rest assured that they will become good guides in order to love the Lord even more and will contribute effective help for your human and Christian development.
As you know, I too am especially attached
to certain saints: among them in addition to St Joseph and St Benedict, whose names I bear is St Augustine whom I have had the great gift to know, so to speak, close at hand through study and prayer and who has become a good “travel- ling companion” in my life and my ministry.
I would like to stress once again an impor- tant aspect of his human and Christian experi- ence, which is also timely in our day, in which
it seems, paradoxically, that relativism is the “truth” which must guide our thoughts, decisions and behaviour.
St Augustine was a man who never lived super cially; his thirst, his restless and constant thirst for the Truth is one of the basic character- istics of his existence; not however for “pseudo- truths”, incapable of giving the heart lasting peace, but of that Truth that gives meaning to life and is the “dwelling-place” in which the heart nds serenity and joy.
As we know, his was a far from easy journey: he thought he had found the Truth in prestige,
in his career, in the possession of things, in the voices that promised him instant happiness; he committed faults, he experienced sorrows, he faced failures but he never stopped, he was never content with what only gave him a glimmer of light.
He was able to look into the depths of his being and realised, as he wrote in Confessions, that the Truth, the God whom he sought with his own efforts was closer to him than he himself, that God had always been beside him, had never abandoned him, was waiting to be able to enter his life once and for all.
As I said in a comment on the lm made recently about his life, St Augustine, in his rest- less seeking realised that it was not he who had found the Truth but that the Truth, who is God, had come after him and found him.
Fr Romano Guardini, commenting on a pas- sage in the third chapter of Confessions said: “St Augustine understood that God is the glory that brings us to our knees, drink that quenches our thirst, treasure that gives happiness ... (he had) the pacifying certainty of those who have understood at last, but also the bliss of the love that knows: ‘this is everything and it is enough for me’.”
Again, in Confessions, in the ninth book, our saint records a conversation with his mother, St Monica.
It is a beautiful scene – he and his mother are at Ostia, at an inn, and from the window they see the sky and the sea, and they transcend the sky and the sea and for a moment touch God’s heart in the silence of created beings.
And here a fundamental idea appears on the way towards the Truth – creatures must be silent, leaving space for the silence in which God can speak.
This is still true in our day too.
At times there is a sort of fear of silence, of recollection, of thinking of one’s own actions, of the profound meaning of one’s life.
All too often people prefer to live only the eeting moment, deceiving themselves that it will bring lasting happiness; they prefer to live super cially, without thinking, because it seems easier; they are afraid to seek the Truth or perhaps afraid that the Truth will nd us, will
Wise guide: St Augustine in His Studio, by Sandro Botticelli, 1480.
take hold of us and change our life, as happened to St Augustine.
I would like to say to all of you and also to those who are passing through a dif cult mo- ment in their journey of faith, to those who take little part in the life of the Church or who live “as though God did not exist” not to be afraid of the Truth, never to interrupt the journey towards it and never to stop searching for the profound truth about yourselves and other things with the inner eye of the heart.
God will not fail to provide light to see by and warmth to make the heart feel that he loves us and wants to be loved.
SAInTlY lIFE
St Augustine
22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time September 3
1st Reading: Jeremiah 20:7-9
2nd Reading: Romans 12:1-2 Gospel Reading: Matthew 16:21-27
21st Sunday in Ordinary Time august 27
1st Reading: Isaiah 22:19-23
2nd Reading: Romans 11:33-36 Gospel Reading: Matthew 16:13-20
Next Sunday’s readings
By FR nORBeRT OlSen SJ
THE story of Matthew’s community really begins with the resurrection. It begins with the revelation to Peter that the Lord is risen.
In Luke’s story of Emmaus, the disciples in Jerusalem proclaimed, “The Lord is risen and has appeared to Peter.”
In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter pro- claims, “This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses”. There’s the start. But, says Matthew, the story has a long way to go before that happens. Jesus has to suffer rejection by the Pharisees, the Saducees and the scribes.
He has to be even deserted by his disciples, and denied by the assembly of the people. Finally he will have to die on the cross before he is raised by the Father.
Thus, in some ways in chapters 16 and 17, there is sketched out the final phase of the life of Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, the saviour of the world – a saviour, far different from the one expected.
But Matthew is not just telling a story. He is writing to encourage his disciples who are experiencing rejection. His disciples are beset on two sides. On one side op- posing his disciples are the Pharisees and the scribes.
These are upholders of the Law, the To- rah. On the other side are Christians now freed from Torah. Matthew has no argu- ment with the upholders of the Torah. He too is an upholder of the Torah but without the additions of the Pharisees.
The Baptism of Jesus by John spells this out clearly. When John objected to baptis- ing Jesus, Jesus replies, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfil all righteousness”.
The Holiness and Cleanliness Codes of the book of Leviticus have to be ob- served. The righteous ones are those who observe the Torah. The Torah places God fair and square in the centre of what life is about. What does it mean to live?
What is it that makes a life worthwhile?
For all Christians it is to live as a person of the beatitudes; to live with a compas- sionate heart; to be Christ-like.
All this requires self-denial. Instead of asking “What’s in it for me?”, I ought to be asking, “What question should I ask, if I am to live a worthwhile life?”
The answer is, “Deny the demands of the self-centred, take up the cross and follow Jesus”. But, what is this cross we are supposed to take up? It is living as one who belongs to the Kingdom.
Christ said, “I have come that they may have life and have it more abundantly”.
The way of God’s Kingdom is the way to life’s abundance. For too long we have been told that Christ died to appease an angry God – to reconcile God to us.
Christ died that we might not sin, that we might not meet violence with violence. Rather, that we might meet violence with compassionate forgiveness, as he did.
Embedded in the story of the Passion, in the Eucharist, we are told that Christ died that sins might be forgiven.
We are then told, “Do this in memory of me.” Do this: forgive just as I forgave those who were violent towards me.
This commentary was written in 2008.
ST Augustine, as a young man, had no place for God in his life.
He was a constant worry to his mother Monica, and she prayed that he would turn away from his wayward habits.
When he eventually did start to turn to God, he did so with gusto.
Augustine became a Christian at 33, was ordained a priest at 36 and a bishop at 41.
Born in Algeria, St Augustine went on to become one of the Church’s best known theologians and writers.
He founded the Augustinian order of priests. As well as preaching impressively, St Augustine lived poverty and helped the poor.
St Augustine is the patron saint of theo- logians and printers, and his feast day is on August 28.
Influential:
St Augus- tine in His Studio, painting by Vittore Carpaccio.
FEAST DAYS THIS wEEk
Monday - St augustine
Battled against heresy
Tuesday - passion of St John the Baptist Established as a feast in 1954
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The Catholic Leader, August 27, 2017