St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

At St. Paul’s Parish today, Thursday, August 28, 2008:

• Choir practices will resume next Thursday. There are no activities on the parish calendar today.

The Summer issue of St. Paul’s Sword of the Spirit, our monthly newsletter, is available on line, as is the calendar of parish events for August 2008.

Today’s news in the Episcopal Church - Episcopal Life Online.

On the calendar tomorrow, August 29, 2008:

• Women’s AA at 7:30 p.m. (in the Dining Room).

Today we commemorate St. Augustine of Hippo.

Hagiographer James Kiefer offers this information about Augustine as part of a much longer biography:

After his conversion [to Christianity in Italy], Augustine went back to his native Africa in 387, where he was ordained a priest in 391 and consecrated bishop of Hippo in 396. It was not his intention to become a priest. He was visiting the town of Hippo (or Hippo Regius, now Annaba, 36:55 N 7:47 E), was in church hearing a sermon, and the bishop, without warning, said, “This congregation is in need of more priests, and I believe that the ordination of Augustine would be to the glory of God.” Willing hands dragged Augustine forward, and the bishop together with his council of priests laid hands on Augustine and ordained him to the priesthood. (The experience may have colored Augustine’s perception of such questions as, “Does a man come to God because he has chosen to do so, or because God has chosen him, and drawn him to Himself?”) A few years later, when the Bishop of Hippo died, Augustine was chosen to succeed him.

He was a diligent shepherd of his flock, but he also found time to write extensively. He was an admirer of Jerome, and wrote him a letter hoping to establish a friendship, but the letter went astray. (In those days there was no public post office, and if you wanted to send a letter to a friend in Athens, you entrusted it to someone you knew who was travelling to Athens, or at least in that general direction, with instructions to deliver it or pass it on to someone else who would oblige.) Jerome did not get the letter, and the contents became public knowledge before he heard of it. Augustine, in addition to saying how much he admired Jerome, had offered some criticisms of something Jerome had written. Jerome was furious, and came close to writing Augustine off altogether. However, Augustine wrote him a second letter, apologizing and explaining what had happened, and Jerome was mollified. They had a long and intellectually substantial correspondence.

Augustine’s written output was vast, and largely responsible for the fact that the entry for him in the index of the Encyc. Brit. is more than a column long. His surviving works (and it is assumed that the majority did not survive) include 113 books and treatises, over 200 letters, and over 500 sermons. His work greatly influenced Luther and Calvin, to the point where for a while Roman Catholic speakers and writers were wary of quoting him lest they be suspected of Protestant tendencies.

We have already mentioned his Confessions [in the longer biography from which these paragraphs are excerpted]. A second great work of his is the book, De Civitate Dei (”The City of God”). This was written after Rome had been sacked by invaders led by Alaric the Visigoth. It is a reply to those who said that the Roman Empire was falling apart because the Christians had taken over; he discusses the work of God in history, and the relation between the Christian as citizen of an earthly commonwealth and the Christian as citizen of Heaven.

His third great work is his De Trinitate (”On the Trinity”). Here, he discusses the doctrine of the Trinity by undertaking to compare the mind of man with the mind of God, since man is made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). Augustine begins by pointing out a Trinitarian structure in the act of knowing something. He continues by pointing out a Trinitarian structure in the act of self-awareness. He concludes by pointing out a Trinitarian structure in the act of religious contemplation by which man sees himself as made in the image of God. (To read Kiefer’s full write-up on Augustine, click here.)

The following prayer for this commemoration from Lesser Feasts and Fasts:

Lord God, the light of the minds that know you, the life of the souls that love you, and the strength of the hearts that serve you: Help us, following the example of your servant Augustine of Hippo, so to know you that we may truly love you, and so to love you that we may fully serve you, whom to serve is perfect freedom; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.