August 28th – Feast of St. Augustine.

Adam Paige
Aug 28
4 min read

August 28th – Additional Meditation. Feast of St. Augustine.

Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation

We will consider St. Augustine in our meditation to-morrow:1st, as an illustrious penitent; 2d, as a great bishop. We will then make the resolution:1st, to apply ourselves, like Augustine, to repair our past life, by a penitence which shall endure until death; 2d, often to utter acts of love towards God, and to seize upon every opportunity that offers itself to devote ourselves to His glory and the good of our neighbor. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of the Apostle, which are so suitable to St. Augustine: “By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace in me hath not been void” (I. Cor. xv. 10).

Meditation for the Morning

Let us adore Our Lord Jesus Christ giving to the Church, in the person of St. Augustine, so illustrious a penitent, so eminent a saint, so admirable a doctor, the oracle of the councils, the light of the Church, the father of fathers, the doctor of doctors. Let us glorify God for the power of His grace, which worked such a miracle, and let us congratulate St. Augustine, who was not only able to say, “By the grace of God I am what I am” but who was also able to add, “His grace in me hath not been void.”

St. Augustine an Illustrious Penitent.

Never was seen a penitent more touched, more humble, more grateful, 1st. More touched, for his tears began to flow from the beginning of his conversion: “There rose within me,” he said, “a tempest, which was followed by an abundant rain of tears,” and he resolved to bury himself alive in some solitary place, there to weep over his faults even to his last sigh. As the order of Providence was opposed to this design, Augustine found means for uniting with the labors of the episcopate the penance of the most austere anchorite. His whole life was a continual course of journeys, of watchings, of fastings, and of crosses; and esteeming these expiations as in sufficient in proportion to the greatness and number of his faults, when he felt that he was about to die he had the penitential psalms placed on the walls of his room, and recited them with a great abundance of sighs, until he breathed his last. 2d. There never was a more humble penitent. In his book of Confessions he reveals the most shameful of his sins to the whole world, and bears his shame in the face of all men and before all ages. Forever and ever it will be known that Augustine had given way to indecency and debauchery, and this public and permanent confession he made whilst he was living in the world, seated upon one of the thrones of the Church, surrounded by heretics and envious men, whose contempt he accepted as a thing due to him. 3d. Never was penitent more grateful. His writings breathe nothing but love of the mercies of the Lord towards him; and in order to recount them, neither his pen nor his tongue is sufficient for his heart; he gives vent to bursts of admiration, to thanksgivings, to effusions of love. “O Beauty, ever ancient and ever new,” he cries out, “too late have I loved Thee ! Unhappy days in which I did not love Thee ! O Fire which ever burnest, and art never consumed; O Love, ever fervent, which knowest neither interruption nor relaxation, inflame me, set me all on fire, that I may love Thee with my whole strength, and that there may be nothing in me which is not love. It seems to me that I love Thee, O my God, but I desire to love Thee more and more.” What a brazier, what a furnace of love ! O great saint, make some sparks of this great fire which devoured thee fall upon my heart.

St. Augustine a Great Bishop.

A bishop is marked by two great characteristics: zeal for evangelizing the people and charity in succoring the unhappy. Now St Augustine possessed these two characteristics in the very highest degree,1st. He had zeal for evangelizing the people. Burning with a desire to make Jesus Christ known and loved, not only by the whole world, but by all ages, he applied himself with his whole strength to the study of the Holy Scriptures; he became an abyss of divine science; then shedding the plenitude of it upon the people, he fed them abundantly with the bread of the word. He united to these eloquent sermons an immense number of learned writings, which were dispersed abroad with the mission of bringing back to the truth pagans and philosophers, Arians and Manicheans, Donatists and Priscillianists, Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians. No error escapes his zeal; he specially pursues the heresy of Pelagius in its last retrenchments; he reveals to the world the most hidden mysteries of grace, in immortal works which will remain a focus of light for the universal Church throughout all ages. 2d. To zeal for evangelizing and instructing he unites charity in solacing the unhappy. He for gets himself, gives all that he has, and arrived at the point of death, he cannot make a testament, says his historian, because he had distributed all he had to the poor and had nothing more to leave. Could there be more beautiful devotion ? Let us bring our life to a nearer resemblance to that of this great saint, and let us judge ourselves.

Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.

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