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St. Augustine of Hippo: The One Church Father Everyone’s Heard Of
Part Three of the Church Fathers series
In the first two parts of this series, I profiled St. Ambrose of Milan and St. Jerome, and in those profiles I mentioned a third Church Father who lived at the same time and interacted with both of them in important ways. Of the three, he is the one you are most likely to have heard of, through his most famous written work (which is also the first autobiography ever written). Today we meet St. Augustine of Hippo, author of The Confessions.
If you read The Confessions in school (or are a collector of great quotes), you will recognize the two most famous quotes from that book by St. Augustine. The first, and most widely quoted today is: “Oh, Master, make me chaste and celibate — but not yet!” The second is: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”
If you’re thinking that those two quotes seem diametrically opposed to each other, you’re right. They essentially form the bookends of Augustine’s spiritual journey and ultimately his entire life. And if there is one key word in them that sums up his life in the period between those two quotes, it’s restless.
Restless. It’s a word we can all relate to, which may be one of the reasons people are still reading the autobiography of a man who lived 1500 years ago. As much as I love Springsteen, it’s a U2 song that Augustine would have most identified with during the first 30 years of his life: “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” He did ultimately find it, which should be an inspiration to us all. Let’s look at how he went from hedonist playboy to one of the great saints of the Church.
Augustine was born in 354 in Thagaste, a city in the Roman province of Numidia (present day Souk Ahras, Algeria). It will surprise some today that Augustine was from North Africa and not Europe, but prior to the Muslim conquest of North Africa in the 7th century all of the region that now includes Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco was predominantly Christian. Several Church Fathers besides Augustine came from this region, including Athanasius of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian, and Cyprian.
