The Confessions of Saint Augustine constitute the autobiography and the summation of the spiritual and human thought of Augustine of Hippo, Father and Doctor of the Church. They are also one of the most beautiful and moving theological texts ever written within the Catholic Church, characteristics that make it an essential masterpiece.
Written between 397 and 400, the Confessions of Saint Augustine are divided into 13 books, in which Augustine addresses God to recount his conversion, his transition from his old self, devoted to vice and sin, to the realization of his new “self.”
Starting from this unique and immortal book, we remember how it is possible for anyone, at any moment, to decide to change their life, no matter what we have done and who we have been before.
What the Confessions of Saint Augustine are About
We have focused on the life of Saint Augustine by talking about his mother, Saint Monica of Tagaste, patron saint of all mothers and a symbol of virtue and unwavering tenacity for all women.
To understand the profound significance of the Confessions of Saint Augustine, we must consider that for the first part of his life, this exceptional man was a true scoundrel. Raised in Tagaste, in present-day Algeria, in a middle-class family, he had a Hellenistic-Roman education. His father, Patricius, was a pagan, his mother a Christian, and Augustine grew up between these two vastly different worldviews, although he was greatly influenced by his mother from an early age. “From my earliest childhood, I had sucked with my mother’s milk the name of my Savior, Your Son,” he would write in one of his Confessions. As he grew, although proving to be an excellent student, Augustine showed signs of increasing restlessness, which led him to indulge in a life of licentiousness and pleasures, which worsened further when he moved to Carthage at seventeen, a city that offered many more amusements and opportunities for sin.
He also dedicated himself to the study of Hellenistic-Latin philosophy. Among other things, he read Hortensius by Marcus Tullius Cicero, which planted the seed of change that would come later, pushing him to open his eyes to his conduct.
He then turned to Manichaeism, fascinated by the concept of the struggle between good, represented by the spiritual world, and evil, represented by the material world, as well as by an approach to the world free from the constraints of faith, devoted to a scientific explanation of nature promoted by the Manicheans.
Augustine embraced this philosophy with great enthusiasm, studying and becoming its propagator, involving friends and acquaintances, and at the end of his studies, he returned to Tagaste to become a grammar teacher. His mother never stopped suffering for Augustine’s heretical choice and found no peace until he decided to distance himself from the Manicheans, disillusioned by the realization that even they could not answer all the questions about life and creation that tormented him.
The Saint holds a cross and has red roses at her feet.
At 29, Augustine moved to Italy and obtained a job as a professor in Milan, where the influence of Bishop Ambrose was predominant. The encounter with this excellent man would radically change him, along with the discovery of Neoplatonic philosophy. In all this, he continued to fight his personal battle against the temptations and passions that dominated him without being able to control them.
Over time, however, and always supported and encouraged by his mother, he returned to embrace Christianity, realizing that in it he could find the answer to all his doubts and inner conflicts. Gradually, Augustine integrated into Christian thought all the insights stimulated in him by Platonic philosophy and began to neglect vices and pleasures, dedicating his days solely to the search for truth. In 387, he returned to Milan to be baptized by Ambrose. Shortly after, his mother Monica died.
At this point in his life, at the age of 44, Augustine wrote the Confessions, at the peak of an experience of study and, above all, a highly varied life, and of a spiritual crisis that had finally led him to find his path. He himself wrote, as the motivation for undertaking this work: “I want to remember my past wickedness and the carnal corruptions of my soul, not because I love them, but so that I may love You, my God.”
In the tenth book of the Confessions, he explicitly states the reasons that led him to write the work: it is not just about recognizing and admitting his sins, but about discovering, through confessing them, that only in God is there true joy and that only by reconciling with God through Christ can man find his way. It is precisely the awareness of what his life was like before that makes this assertion all the more significant.
Statue in maple wood, hand painted by the artisans of Val Gardena.
The Confessions in Brief
Here are the Confessions summarized briefly.
Book I
Invocation to God, childhood memories, reflections on children and school, guilty of having led him away from God.
Book II
He then talks about his turbulent youth and recounts an emblematic theft of pears committed only for the thrill of the forbidden.
Book III
Augustine recalls the sins committed in Carthage, his love for the theater, amusements, but also his encounter with Cicero’s books and how his search for wisdom and truth began, leading to his adherence to Manichaeism.
Book IV
He talks further about the Manicheans, but also about the concubinage in which he lives with a woman, his work as a rhetoric teacher in Tagaste, the death of a friend, and the literary contests that make him proud and arrogant, distancing him even more from God.
Book V
From Carthage, Augustine moves to Rome, tired of his students’ subterfuge and torn by doubts about Manichean disciplines. Then he goes to Milan, where he hears Saint Ambrose speak for the first time. Christian faith begins to reinsert itself into his life.
Book VI
At 30, Augustine divides his time between study and conversations with friends, but passions and carnal weaknesses still haunt him. He decides to leave his concubine and get married, but is full of doubts.
Book VII
Seeking answers to clarify the origin of evil and why God allows it to exist, Augustine distances himself more and more from Manichean fables and embraces Neoplatonism. He begins to form the idea that evil is nothing more than a consequence of distancing oneself from God, and that man is what he loves, thus if man loves God, he should fear nothing.
Book VIII
The time for conversion is now ripe. Augustine speaks with Simplicianus and other scholars. One day, while in a garden, he hears a child shouting: “Tolle lege, tolle lege!” take and read, take and read, and he takes in hand the Letters of Saint Paul and reads a passage against lust. He then announces to his mother his decision to convert.
Book IX
Augustine renounces teaching, with all the satisfactions it brings him. He spends time with friends and his illegitimate son Adeodatus, then receives baptism from Saint Ambrose. The sudden death of his mother shortly after provides another pretext to talk about his mistakes and the profound influence she had on his life.
Book X
Augustine summarizes in this book the reasons that led him to write his work. His conclusion is that only God is true joy, and men must understand this, but are continually led astray by carnal desires and pride. Only through Christ can men reconcile with God.
Book XI
In the last three books, Augustine focuses on philosophical and theological questions, on God who created everything starting from the Word, on the fact that there are three times: the present of the past (memory), the present of the present (intuition), and the present of the future (expectation).
Book XII
Augustine comments on Genesis, the transition from darkness and formless matter, and debates the various interpretations of Scripture.
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5 June 2024
