Ideas - Encounters with St. Augustine

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

Reigning Pope Leo XIV has been deeply influenced by St Augustine, and so the fourth century titan of Western thought has re-entered the global conversation. Canadian scholars predict how the 21st century Catholic church will evolve with St Augustine as a guide.

All right, look, I am not going to lie to you. I love when an album drops, and it just, I know it's going to define my entire summer. And that is how I'm feeling about this new Lord album. My name is Alameen Abdul-Mahmood. I host a show called Commotion. And that is where we talk about the biggest stories in entertainment and pop culture, like this new Lord album or the Haim album or whatever great new music is defining our soundtrack for the summer. Come hang with us.

Follow Commotion wherever you get your podcast. This is a CBC podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyed. Lord, you are great and worthy of our praise. Your strength and your wisdom are beyond measure. We long to praise you, though we are burdened by our mortality. These are the opening lines from one of the most influential works in Western culture. They're from the Confessions by St. Augustine of Hippel.

Though we are conscious of sin, we long to praise you. Our delight is to praise you. For you have so made us that we long for you, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. Augustine's Confessions was written at the end of the 4th century. It continues to feed our appetite for authentic voices and our spiritual yearning to answer the big questions. I had questions about the meaning of life,

about why we're here, about who I am, And there was a great sense of emptiness and a sense of fear that there was nothing. And Augustine talks about how we are restless until we find rest in God. And I was just struck that someone who lives so long ago in such different circumstances could voice that kind of sentiment and articulate it so wonderfully. But the figure of St. Augustine was multifaceted, and wasn't always someone we would consider. likeable. I mean, he's fairly promiscuous, right, and all the difficulties that come with

that. He has a partner for 15 years, who I think he actually treats quite badly. Yet, as some scholars would say, it's easy to misunderstand Augustine. As much as I disagree with the way that he did things or the way that he thought about these things, it's not as clear cut as we want it to be. If we take him out of context and try to make a modern person with our own views, we may be disappointed. But he is quite liberal for his time, his views on women. Great respect for his mother and wrote to women, took them seriously. Augustine lived 1,600 years ago, in what's now Algeria, and his voice still speaks to so many people. In fact, in May 2025, his voice began to speak in a new world.

we have a pope let's watch leo the 14th coming out maybe more widely than ever before I am a son of santa augustino I am a son of St. Augustineian who said With you, I am a Christian, and for you, a bishop. And I think in that sense, we can all walk together to that homeland, which God has prepared for us. To stick with this, so I've sort of kicked together and just kept it. Oh, I love it. It's so good. Ideas, producer Sean Foley, met with.

with four scholars to talk about their encounters with Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo. So that's going to be in your papers. Yeah, that's right. When you're donated to the library of your choice. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Augustine was one of the first books I picked up when I was doing my undergraduate studies and reading his confessions changed my life.

I had discovered in Augustine someone who was speaking to my third. soul at the time, and I have never really let him go. I'm Nick Hatt. I'm a parish priest, an Anglican priest in Toronto at Church of St. Martin in the Fields, and prior to that, I was an Anglican priest in Nova Scotia. I studied Augustine for the last 20 years. It's such a real story. He is struggling with how to live with his parents, right? How to deal with the inconsistencies in there, the way they treat him, you know. He feels unseen and unheard, and he's acting out in all kinds of ways. As a young adult, I mean, he's fairly promiscuous, right, and all the difficulties that come with that. He has a partner for 15 years, who I think he actually treats quite badly,

and, you know, just the complications of that kind of life, right? He has a child, and how does he navigate that, right? So he's, I saw in him, I think when I first picked up the confession, it's just a real soul, a soul struggling to live a life of goodness. And I just appreciated finding another soul talking about that in a really honest way. Well, in my 16th year, furloughed from school, because we did not have money, I lived idly at home with my parents, and the thorn bushes of lust grew rank over my head, and there was no hand to root them out. When you're talking about promiscuity and things like that, and the parental relationship,

I just remember the scene where he's describing the baths. My father saw me one day at the baths, and noticed how I was coming of age, endowed with restless stirrings of first manhood, and he told my mother about it with joy, as if grandchildren were already on the way. The father is, like, impressed because his son, his son is. physically responding the way he should. He rejoiced, like a drunken man. Drunk with the wine the world drinks when it forgets you,

it's creator and loves the creature in your place. He's a virile young man, right? Yeah, and just the pressure that puts on, what does that say about the kind of negative masculinity that instills in him? And this book is written so long ago, you know, but it's, yeah, I think there's a very present reality to it, yeah. So, of course, one of the things that makes the confessions a very unique autobiography

is that his confession is addressed to God. And I think there's a dynamism to that that's just beyond anything else. How would you describe what that means? You know, he's placing this, his whole life within the life of God. He's telling God what God already knows about himself, about Augustine. And so in that sense, it's not like he's telling God anything new, but he is returning himself to God, placing his life within the hands of God. And we are meant as we read it to discover that and also to begin to think of how our own lives are held within the embrace of God.

Too late have I loved you Oh beauty so ancient and so new Too late have I loved you Behold You were within me while I was outside It was there that I sought you And a deformed creature rushed headlong upon these things

Of beauty which you have made You were with me, but I was not with you. They kept me far from you, those fair things which, if they were not in you, would not exist at all. You have called to me and have cried out and have shattered my deafness. Late have I loved you, right? You were within me, but I was outside. you, he says to God. That was the great, oh my goodness, the great revelation for me in reading the confessions was that my life, though it feels as though it is so separate, so

disintegrated, and apart from God, that in fact there is this divine presence that my life is taken up into. And so there's, I found that, I would say, of a comfort, but also that it gives you a kind of courage, I think, to know that life struggles are not meaningless, they're not pointless, that these are moments for endless growth, an opportunity to grow, to grow as a human. Augustine says to us, there's a pattern to this, to this conversion that I'm showing you in the confessions. The soul moves from inferior things to superior things, from external things to interior things, that this is the general pattern of conversion, a life in which we lose ourselves in the created world. We misuse it. We misuse our bodies. We relate to the world

in all kinds of unhealthy ways. And that a Christian pilgrimage, although I think it's more universal than that, is about learning to have healthy relationships with the world around you and with your neighbor, healthy relationship with yourself, and that includes a healthy relationship with God. And that this is the general pattern. How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys, which I had once feared to lose and was now glad to reject. You drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place. You who were sweeter than all pleasure, do not to flesh and blood. You who outshine all light, yet are hidden

deeper than any secret in our hearts. You who surpass all honor, though not in the eyes of men who see all honor themselves. At last, my mind was free from the annoying anxieties of ambition and gain, from wallowing in filth and scratching the itching soar of lust. I began to talk to you freely, O Lord, my God, my light, my wealth, and my salvation. At the end of his autobiography, he tells us. the biography of his mother, Monica. And he credits his final conversion to Christianity to her. It's almost like he's added this biography of his mother on. You think, well, if it's just about him becoming this Christian, why doesn't it stop at his baptism? Why is he going to tell us about

Monica? The same pattern of conversion that he goes through in his personal life is a universal pattern. It's also a pattern that he's showing us is happening in Monica's own life because he goes back to her childhood and takes us through her marriage, which is a very difficult marriage. And he takes us right up to the point of her death. He is just filled with grief after his mother's death, which is a good thing, I think. But it's a kind of a grief that he cannot resolve until he comes to recognize something that she understood that he did not, which is this moment of recognizing that your life is hid with God, your life is lived within gods. He had discovered what it meant in his head, but he had yet to discover what it meant

in his heart. She didn't contemplate having her corpse expensively clothed or preserved her perfumes. She didn't covet a choice monument or care about the tomb in her homeland. She didn't give any instructions of that kind, but merely asked that we remember her at your altar, and she had served there without missing a single day. And she knew that your sacrificial victim was shared out from there. No one could tear her away from your shelter and care. Neither the lion, nor the dragon could get in her way, not by confronting her with force and not by ambushing her. The end of her life, she says, it does not matter what you do with my body. I want to be remembered to God because my whole life is nothing apart from God. I think that's the final moment

that he needs in his own spiritual conversion. It's a moment that he gets not from the academics, not from the smartest guys in the room but from his mother who was from what we can tell probably pretty uneducated not necessarily a likable person all the time but a devoted to her son and a faithful pious woman in her own right I think that's a symbol for just the power yeah that the religious life can have within the community yeah and of course the setting is beautiful, she's ailing, they're together, they're looking out over this, is it an austia? Yeah, in Austria. They had this incredible mystical vision. He, I think it just writes this beautifully. He says, they're just leaning, looking out a window one day. And they begin to talk

about what must the life of the saints be like? Our conversation was brought clear to the conclusion that any degree of delight in the physical senses under however much, much material light, didn't seem worthy of comparison or even of mention in relation to the bliss of that eternal life. Their hearts are so stirred up and they reach this point where they, he says, we touched this kind of eternal moment. And the language there in the Latin, he uses the word attingamous. It's almost like touch as if to taste, right? They take. this kind of divine life.

Stretching upward with a more fiery motion toward that thing itself, we walked around step by step, all material objects and even the sky from which the sun and moon and stars shine over the earth. And still we climbed up inwardly as we thought of and spoke of, unwondered at your works. We came into our own mind. and climbed up beyond them

to reach the land of abundance that never fails where you graze Israel forever on the father that is truth. He says we suddenly our hearts, basically our hearts burst and we fall. fell back to earth. And he's frustrated at that moment. He says, why is it that we can reach up to heaven and have this moment, this beautiful eternal moment, but we cannot stay there? And that's when

I think the whole dialogue shifts that, I think this is the real point of the confessions, that our striving for God, our desire for God is, in fact, God's desire for us at work within us. and so without that desire, without that desire that God has for us, we are nothing. God's grace, God's love for me has gone way ahead of me, and I just need to walk into that. I don't have to manufacture it. I don't have to earn love here, and that my life in some sense is a pilgrimage in which I'm trying to encounter, I'm trying to see, I'm trying to discover a love that is already present to me.

The first time I read St. Augustine or I encountered him was when I was about 10 years old and it was a line from the confessions, the opening line, where he talks about the wrestling, heart. And I, at that time, had been experiencing some restlessness myself. I'm Amanda Erulanidam. I'm currently a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University, and I completed my PhD in political science with a dissertation on St. Augustine. I had questions about the meaning of life, about why we're hear about who I am. And there was a great sense of emptiness and a sense of fear that there was nothing. And no one around me really talked about these kind of issues. So I assume no one else thought about them. And Augustine talks about how we as human beings are restless until we find

rest in God. And I was just struck that someone who lives so long ago and in such different circumstances could voice that kind of sentiment and articulate it so wonderfully. Let the restless, unrighteous go. Let them run from you. But you see them. You split the shadows apart. And look, everything around them is beautiful, but they themselves are ugly. They don't know that you're everywhere, as no place confines you within its boundaries. And where was I myself when I was looking for you. You were right in front of me, but I had left myself and couldn't find me. How much less was I able to find you? So I grew up with parents who went to mass every Sunday. They sent me to Catholic school, but there wasn't a lot of discussion about

why we do this or what's its significance. And it seemed to me that you know, some people, they were kind of content just to go through the motions, that it was important to go to church. But it wasn't really necessary to go any deeper, and they were content to stay in that middle ground. But I think I reached a place very early on where I felt I couldn't stay half in and half out. It had to either be fully in or fully out. And And Augustine helped me to think about which way I wanted to go. He encouraged me to think that there might be something more that it's worth exploring. Here, my dear Marsilinus, is the fulfillment of my promise,

a book in which I have taken upon myself, the task of defending the glorious city of God, against those who prefer their own gods to the founder of that city. During my undergraduate studies, I did go to one of my professors, and I asked him, because I was curious and interested in reading the City of God, I asked for his advice, and he was a scholar, partly working on Augustine. And his advice to me regarding City of God was, don't read it. It has...

It's a long, rambling text with everything in the kitchen sink and you're better off just avoiding it. What happened after Numa in the succeeding rains? The al-Bans were provoked to war with great disaster to the Romans as well as to Alba.

I was a little deflated, but I thought, okay, I will let it go. Eventually, in my fourth year, I did take a course on Augustine. Alba armies and a shrinkage of both populations. I could see why he had warned me, because it was a long text filled with all kinds of tangential points that I had no idea what the relevance of those were. Suffered heavy blows until most men were weary of a struggle,

which caused equal loss to, both sides. Then they decided to settle the issue of the war by a combat between triplet brothers from either side. And so it could be quite arduous to read. From the Alban side, the three Curatiae. Two of the Horatiae were defeated and slain by the Curiatiai. And interestingly enough, Augustin himself comments about the arduousness of writing the text. So I think I'm allowed to say that. You can appreciate the sincerity there. Yes, exactly.

Who felt the grief on the two sides? Who about the race of Aeneas, the descendants of Ascanias, the offspring of Venus, the grandsons of Jupiter? For here also was a case of sin. But at the same time, I was very struck by a lot of the themes that Augustine brought up in City of God. One of those was humility. I had been reading all these philosophers, and they were all very, for the most part, interested in great men and great deeds, or at least in the self-sufficient individual. And I had a lot of questions about whether that was an accurate depiction of human life and of human beings.

And Augustine seemed to be discussing a different aspect of human life. I think Augustine really gives a more robust description of humility because he doesn't see it's purely in intellectual terms or something you employing. discussion, but something you live out in a more active way. And for him, I think the pinnacle of humility is not just recognizing the truth about your own limits as a human being, as a finite creature, but also imitating Christ who he sees as the archetypal figure who captures what it means to be a humble person who is willing to empty himself out in self-sacrifice, that you set aside your desires and your wants for the sake of love, of loving others. Augustine returns to that repeatedly throughout the city of God.

I know how great is the effort needed to convince the proud of the power and excellence of humility, an excellence which makes it soar above all the summits of this world. Therefore, I cannot refrain from speaking about the city of the world, a city which aims at dominion, which holds nations in enslavement, but is itself dominated by that very lust of domination. Politics is really about power, about wielding power, about overcoming enemies.

How can a virtue that is concerned with setting aside the ego, with giving space to others, how does that help a person flourish in political life? The conclusion I came away reading Augustine is that in some ways, humility, as he describes, it is helpful to political life, and there are certain respects where it can be helpful. For example, it can encourage people to want to help the poor and the needy, those on the margins. One thing Augustine is very concerned about is judges and judgment and he wrote as a bishop to many judges

asking them to be merciful to some of the people that they were judging not to judge them too harshly and to recognize the limits of their own lives as judges and not to think that they're better than the people that they're judging. So humility in that respect can also be helpful. As for those,

who lead a good life, if they are skilled in the art of government, then there's no happier situation for mankind that they, by God's mercy, should wield power. Yet such men attribute to the grace of God whatever virtues they may be able to display in this present life because God has given those virtues to them in response to their wish, their faith, and their petition.

At the same time, they realize how far they fall short of the perfect righteousness, such as is found in the fellowship of the angels for which they strive to fit themselves. However much praise and public approbation is given to the virtue which is engaged in the service of human glory, it is in no way to be compared to the humblest beginnings of the saints whose hope has been placed in the grace and mercy of the true God. Augustine also recognizes that there are limits to how applicable humility is to political life. And he doesn't have a problem with that because he thinks that politics in itself is a limited spirit. that we can never find our happiness in this life, in politics. And sometimes that means that

doing what's right and engaging in self-sacrifice comes at a political cost to oneself. His greatest example of this are the martyrs, who he says, were willing to imitate Christ and sacrifice their lives for what they believe to be true. But it costs them their lives. And he doesn't see that as something unhappy because they're in their desire to love God and to set aside all the goods of this world to express that love. They gained a greater intimacy with God, which now they can enjoy in heaven. When we arrive at that state of peace, there will be no longer a life that ends in death, but a life that is life in sure and sober truth.

There will be no animal body to weigh down the soul in its process of corruption. There will be a spiritual body with no cravings, a body subdued in every part to the will. Before he became a Christian, he was a great orator, he was quite ambitious, and he was advancing in his career. That didn't bring any satisfaction. It was kind of like drinking salt water. Once he converted, his plan was to sell most of his inheritance and then found a small religious community and live quietly. And he was very much at peace with that. But he was kind of elected as a priest and later as a bishop. A community could just elect a person by acclamation.

Actually, there was a story of him. I think once he was a priest, he knew that certain dioceses were in needy. of a bishop. So he tried to avoid those because he didn't want to be forced to be a bishop. But they caught him at one point and forced him to be, essentially forced him to be a bishop. And at one point, he just cried and, you know, said, why is this happening to me? So, but he also just accepted that, you know, this was what God had asked him to do. And he was practicing the kind of daily self-sacrifice of setting aside his own desires because he felt that he had a responsibility

to the people around them, to serve them. And at the end of his life, he was very satisfied with that, I think more so than if he had continued in his political ambitions. That was Amanda Aralaneda, postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University. Her work on St. Augustine focuses on the virtues and limits of humility in the political sphere. This is Ideas. I'm Nala Ayad.

Poetry has the power to connect our inner universe in the outer world. I'm Maggie Smith, poet and host of The Slowdown, a podcast from American Public Media. Each weekday, find time to take a breather from your to-do list or doom-scrolling for that matter and take in a moment of reflection with a hand-picked poem. Listen to The Slowdown, wherever you get podcasts. St. Augustine's ideas still resonate today, 1600 years after he lived. And with the election of Pope Leo

the 14th in the spring of 2025, Augustine is reaching an unprecedented global audience. But of course, he was only human. And he'd probably be the first to admit it. He was not one to conceal his flaws. I have a love-hate relationship with Augustine. I think too often, especially within our Western culture, there's a very strong, good versus bad trope, right, in terms of how we define people, and especially historical figures, right? And you lose out in all the nuances of what makes a person a person, the weakness is just as much as the strengths.

For Augustine scholar Sid Sudiakle, that human element is obvious. and essential. Everyone is going to come into this relationship with Augustine with their own particular lived experiences and their own backgrounds and all of those things. And so who is Augustine really translates into who is Augustine to you, who is Augustine for you. And I think that makes it a lot more layered question than at first glance. My name is Sididiakal. My pronouns are he him shah. The third pronoun.

Shah. Yes. It's Filipino. Okay. I wondered about that. So is that like Tagalog? Yes. Yes. So it's Tagalog. And the funny thing about that particular pronoun is that is genderless. Oh. Yeah, we were into being woke before y'all were going to. Right. It was built in. Yeah. And you are an Augustus.

scholar. Yes. With trepidation, do I accept this label? Okay. All right. Well, that's appropriate, I think. How would you define then or describe who Augustine is for you? I think at his score, he really wanted to take care of the people in his care. I don't think that you can really take that away from him. And I think that's a part of the love side for me of Augustine is that he really wanted to take care of his flock. And that is just absolutely an admirable position to be in. So then what's the other poll of the tension there for you? The other poll is that I think sometimes in our desire to, do good, we might be inclined to do bad things to accomplish the good. And so my dissertation looked at the way that disgust affects theology. And so in particular, I was looking at his

relationship with the Donatis. The Donatists named for Donatus, a fourth-century bishop, insisted that any priest or bishop who had bowed to Roman authority during the persecution of Christians was a traditor, one of those who, quote, handed the holy things over. And so the sacraments performed by these priests or bishops were declared invalid, which goes against the whole idea that the sacraments themselves come through the Holy Spirit rather than are determined by the purity of the person giving them. The Donatist schism centered in North Africa was one of Augustine's major concerns. and he was very committed to bringing them back into the fold, at first without coercion. Early on in his ministry, he was very anti-violence in terms of the use of violence

against the Jews to convert or even against other people to convert, because that's not the way. When his appeals fell on deaf ears and the Donatist schism became more violent, Augustine's attitude changed. And so how do you have someone who, you know, initially was against the use of force to compel people into the fold, so to speak, and then suddenly having that change into being okay with the use of state-sponsored violence for religious reasons? If you were living quietly outside this banquet of holy unity,

we would find you on the roads, as it were. But now, because on account of the many evil and savage acts that you commit against our people, you are full of thorns and thistles, we compel you to enter. One who is compelled is forced to go where he does not want to go, but after he has entered, he eats willingly. Hold in check your wicked and wild heart. then, in order that you may find in the true church of Christ, the banquet of salvation. Letter 173.

That is sort of where the tension is with me. And I think to a certain degree, as much as I disagree with the way that he did things or the way that he thought about these things, it's not as clear-cut as we want it to be. because the care that you have towards someone can easily turn into coercion for the sake of that someone. What more do you want, you people? What more do you want? We are not dealing with your gold and silver. It is not your land and estates, not even the health of your body that is at stake. We are challenging your souls about acquiring eternal. life, and escaping eternal death.

Letter 43. You see this very strong, I would even say, like paternalistic trend, not only in theology, but also in culture, right, in the ways that we treat a lot of marginalized groups. I'm doing this for your own good, right? So how many times as a parent, have you said that to your child? And how many times has this sort of rhetoric been used to,

uphold a lot of things that, you know, looking back now, we're saying, oh, maybe we shouldn't have done that. Do you have a passage that you would, that comes to mind from Augustine that might... Say what now? One passage? Because it's a very tall order you're asking of me. Right, right. And really, it's just like a little taster.

So this is the one that I chose. And then I'll explain why. So this is from letter 93. He says, it is better to love with severity than to deceive with leniency. It is more beneficial to take brother away from a hungry man in order that he might be literacy and consent to injustice. And someone who ties down a crazy person and who rouses a lazy person, loves them both, though he is a bother to both. Who can love us more than God?

And he, nonetheless, does not cease not only to teach us with gentleness, but also to frighten us for our salvation. Yeah, I'm just going to let that sit. You know, the first thing I thought when I heard that was not exactly trauma-informed. Yeah, and that's the nice version. Yeah, that's the, yeah, yeah, wow. So it gets harsher, is what it gets harsher, is what you're saying. But, but see, the hard part is that I agree that it does get harsher, right?

But to a certain degree, it's not harsh because it's leading to someone's salvation. And so, like, any means to get you, there, right, is all fair game. And this is where I have a lot of thoughts. Yeah. Well, the first thing that comes to my mind when you say that is that, I mean, he would not have known this, but that sows the seeds for all kinds of justifications of colonialism. Ah, yeah.

Right? To say the least. To say the least. But can we even make him responsible for that? Is that the responsibility of the people who are interpreting him? I would say both, right? Like, I saw this, like, a snippet of an interview, right, where this one person was saying colonialism was wrong.

And the host of the show becoming an apologist, right, and saying, like, okay, well, like, We can't say it's all wrong because, like, look, we gave them sanitation. We gave them transportation. Those countries did not have money. They did not have the creativity. They did not have people in positions of power to do this. No, they didn't. The interview was on the British TV outlet, G.B. News, in May of 2025,

featuring tabloid columnist and commentator Carol Malone. This particular clip went viral. It just makes a difference. So it's okay to live without education. and it's okay to live without a transportation system, is it? They did have, they did have education. So that type of mentality, right? And then when you hear that passage that I just read, right?

It's really hard for me not to be like, I think he just gave them justification for all the things. I mean, you know, correlation is not causation. However, I don't know. this case because it's so it's so close that I don't even know. No, it's

sobering. One of the hardest parts I think about doing my dissertation was I dealt with disgust a lot and one of the key I would say prerequisites I think for disgust to happen

is dehumanization right? And so I would argue that if he dehumanization wasn't there, then the ability for disgust to come through in its fullness is very difficult, right? Do you think St. Augustine was capable of dehumanization? I think every one of us is capable of that. to Macedonia's Ficker of Africa If I'm a burden to you with a lenty letter You surely brought this on yourself when you called me wise

For this reason after all I have dared to say these things to you In order to show you not the wisdom that I have But the sort of wisdom that I ought to have If I have anything of this wisdom which is the one true wisdom I have received it from God and not presume to have it from myself

for it is not by my talent or merit but by his give that I am what I am if I am in any way worthy of praise It's It's odd to be returning to some who feels like an old friend. I think there's a continuity between my kind of Augustinian life, a professional sort of Augustine scholar, and my profession is an

archivist, and that's what I'm trying to unpack at the moment. I'm Samantha Thompson. I'm a senior archivist for the Region Appeal. I came to do this after completing a PhD on Augustine. I guess you could say it was on the problem of evil, and that's something that that I suppose when I started reading Augustine, I felt I had in common with him. We were both young people who were distressed by the extent of suffering in the world. How does that relate to archiving? I contend that one of his views is that friendship is a real part of salvation,

and salvation comes from the Latin word for health, Salus. So part of the way human beings are restored or healed is by relationship to one another. Relationship is kind of at the heart of Augustine's thought. It's at the heart of reality for him and the Trinity. And human beings have this kind of mysterious unity such that they are communally damaged. But the arena of that damage is also the arena of grace. And we see in the confessions that he sees himself. as part of a story. And what I realized is that I am a professional storykeeper in my working life.

I preserve and steward voices of other people. And sometimes when I have an existential crisis about why am I doing this, if I have been able to bring two people into contact with another across kind of space and time, that will have been enough, even if I can't save everything. And this idea of our needing each other is very important to him. And we make each other. Souls are forged through engagement with other people. So in a way, we are being written into each other's stories. And I see that as really a metaphor for the work I do now.

There's almost a holiness when you see somebody reading a letter from 200 years ago and making that connection to another human being. And it is healing. There's such a sensitivity in his writing to just the sheer beauty in the world, the goodness and the beauty, and yet the conscience, just the ugliness that human beings are capable of.

And how do you put those two things together? And what do you realize is that only a good thing can be evil, right? When you say something's evil, what you mean is that it should be otherwise. there's a way that thing should be. It's a condemnation because something is falling short of the nature that we sense that it should have. For him, evil is not an other.

It's not an alien substance. That's very important. It's something good that has been damaged. And so to eradicate evil, You need to heal the thing in which it is inhering by damage. You can't eradicate evil by destroying or social engineering or managing because evil is in all of us. So it's not a group of people who are evil.

It's not a substance that's evil. It's not a monster out there. I think that's something that he can offer to all ages. is to not try to make evil somebody else something else. One of the things that really spoke to me was his continual language of longing, of the sense that there's something that you really want and nothing in the world will satisfy. And to try to make things the most beautiful things in the world put that burden on them of making you happy, they can't bear that burden.

you can't understand Augustine without this concept of love for him love is a movement it's a weight of the soul it draws you to whatever you love and our problem he thinks diagnostically is that we

is not that we want too much but that we want too little we are constantly trying to make things that aren't God gods are idle factories and there's one sermon he was talking about the Christian life and this is what he says. What we are to see is a vision that neither eye has seen nor ear has heard. A vision surpassing all earthly beauties of gold or silver.

Of woods or fields. The beauty of sea and sky, of sun, moon and stars. The beauty of angels, for all have their beauty from him. The spoken word has done Olnik. could. The rest must be pondered in the heart. The whole life of a good Christian is a holy longing. What you long for, as yet you do not see. But longing makes in you the room that shall be filled. When you fill a purse knowing how large a present it is to hold, you stretch wide its cloth, knowing how much you are to put in it. Let us long because we are to be filled. Augustine was always personal for me, right? And that's kind of an Augustinian realization that what we hold, the beliefs we hold,

it's always personal. You know, I came to him, assuming that he was going to be doctrinaire and merciless, because that's the image that a lot of people have inherited. And I didn't find that at all. And he's a paradox. He's idealistic, but he's realistic. There's no one more realistic on human frailty. He's passionate, but he's disciplined.

He's self-revealing. but he's unpretentious and he's humane but exacting and I think this was a person that I didn't expect to find Oh Lord,

grant us peace for all that we have is your gift grant us the peace of repose the peace of the Sabbath the peace which has no evening for this worldly order

in all this beauty will pass away all these things that are very good will come to an end when the limit of their existence is reached they have been allotted their morning and their evening but the seventh day is without

evening and the sun shall not set upon it for you have sanctified it and willed that it shall last forever When our work in this life is done, we too shall rest in you in the Sabbath of eternal life. Though our works are good only because you have given us the grace to perform them. On ideas, you've been listening to Encounters with Augustine. Produced by Sean Foley.

Featuring Samantha Thompson, Sid Sudiakal, Amanda Arulanadam, and Nicholas Hatt. Readings by Glenn Tai. Special thanks to Lisa Godfrey. Our technical producer is Danielle Duval, with help from Emily Kiervezio. Our web producer is Lisa Ayuso. Our senior producer is Nicola Luxchich. The executive producer of ideas is Greg Kelly, and I'm Nala Ayyad.

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