SIXTY-SECOND SERMON
ON THE HUMBLE DOCTOR OF THE CHURCH, ST. AUGUSTINE.
Subject.
St. Augustine was: 1. Great and noble in the eyes of the whole world; 2. He was lowly and humble in his own eyes. Preached on the feast of St. Augustine.
Text.
" He shall be called great." (Matt 5:19)
Introduction.
To be called great in the kingdom of heaven is a well-merited honor and happiness of the saints of God, and this praise can be bestowed on them without any danger; for the saints are not subject to vanity and pride, and they seek as the end and object of their own glory nothing but the honor and glory of their Creator. To be called great during life on earth is also a happiness and an honor, but it is full of danger; for who does not know and experience the great power that esteem and honor before the world have over the human heart to make it puffed up and proud and self-complacent? It is indeed a rare thing to be held in high esteem, and yet to remain humble. St. Augustine was a man of this rare kind, or, to speak better, extraordinary virtue; it is his feast that we celebrate to-day. This I at once proceed to prove, to his greater honor.
Plan of Discourse.
St. Augustine was great and noble in the eyes of the whole world; the first part. St. Augustine was lowly and humble in his own eyes; the second part. On both accounts he was an admirable saint. Happy for us if, as we cannot strive to be as great as he before the world, we at least endeavor to follow at a distance his humility and lowliness.
This is the grace which we beg of the Holy Ghost, through the hands of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the holy angels, and also through the humility of the wonderfully humble St. Augustine.
To prove the great esteem and honor in which Augustine was held by the world I need not seek long; the gospel of to-day furnishes me with a sufficient basis for it: " A city seated on a mountain cannot be hid. An unusually brilliant light cannot fail to be remarked unless every one is stone-blind. An extra ordinarily clear understanding, wisdom, learning, skill cannot show itself in public without exciting the wonder, admiration, and respect of men.
My dear brethren, when you hear Augustine mentioned you may picture to yourselves a light such as had never shone in the Church of God since the time of the apostles; a man whose like in wisdom and learning the world had never before seen; a man to whom the Holy Ghost (from whom all wisdom and truth comes) seems to have given all knowledge, and to have chosen as the strongest support of His Church. Although the tongues of men should be silent, we learn this from the books he has left us, treating of the highest mysteries, the number of which is so great that we can hardly understand how the man who wrote them could do anything else, even though he spent day and night in writing. Victor of Utica says that before the persecution of the Vandals commenced two hundred and thirty-two books had already come forth from the pen of Augustine, be sides the explanation of the whole Book of Psalms, the epistles, and other tracts called homilies, " the number of which it is impossible to comprehend," as the author says. St. Thomas of Villanova says that he is not to be believed who says that he has read all the writings of Augustine: " He was able to write more than we can read." The Saint himself acknowledges that in his youth he learned all imaginable arts without a teacher, and without any special trouble, and learned them to perfection, so that he was justly considered a miracle of nature, a wonder of mental powers and acuteness.
This is shown by the many heretics, especially the Manichaeans, Donatists, Pelagians, Arians, Priscillianists, Origenists, Marcionists, Nestoriaris, who in his time attacked the Catholic Church on all sides, and tried to destroy her by their errors; it was Augustine who opposed all those legions of hell, proved their falsehood, and put them to flight. So that one may well apply to him the words said in the Scripture of the wise man: " Thou wast filled as a river with wisdom." l It is vain labor to try to restrain a river in its course; the more it is opposed the more impetuously do its waters rush on. There you have a symbol of St. Augustine; like a river he has poured out his knowledge on the world, so that no hostile force could withstand him. The great- What renown, reputation, and glory he thus acquired we can again learn from the men of his own time. Great and small, the clergy and the laity, rich and poor came to him as to a public oracle to seek counsel and instruction from his wisdom. No doubt arose in important and weighty matters which Augustine was not able to solve and explain; no passage so dark in Holy Writ that he could not interpret. Pope Martin V. says that any one who thought he knew something of the mysteries of Christ, of the faith, and religion, had Augustine always in his thoughts and on his lips. Hardly any part of Scripture could be understood unless the light to explain it was given to Augustine; hardly anything could be made clear without his interpretation. Even during his lifetime he was called everywhere the salt of the earth, a light of the world, a teacher of teachers, a hammer and scourge of heretics, a tongue of the Church, an oracle of the Holy Ghost. These, and such as these were the titles with which he was honored by popes and prelates, by emperors and rulers of the world. Hear in what terms of laudation the Emperor Theodosius speaks of Augustine in a letter written to invite him to the Council of Ephesus: Now, writes the emperor, we ad dress our prayers to thee, who art in all things a light of the Christian world, an enemy of and terror to apostates, who dread to appear before thee; to thee, we repeat, we address our most earnest prayers, beseeching thee to come to Ephesus, where the Council of the Church is to be held. St. Jerome, whose authority is worth that of a thousand others, who lived at the same time and kept up a constant interchange of letters with Augustine, used to lay down his pen whenever Augustine began to write, acknowledging publicly that there could be nothing more for him to say on the subject or to add to it. For thus he answers the Pelagians: The holy and eloquent Bishop Augustine has already written against your heresy; therefore I will be silent lest I should seem to carry wood to the forest, or pour water into the sea. For I cannot bring forward anything new that his enlightened understanding has not already perceived. To Augustine himself he writes in the following terms: I have always with the utmost respect admired thy holiness; but now I cannot allow an hour to pass without mentioning thy name. All Catholics hon or thee as a new founder of the ancient Christian faith; and, what is a still greater proof of thy renown, all heretics fear and curse thee. In fact, all that could be said hitherto or drawn from the well-spring of the Holy Scriptures has been exhausted by thee. So far St. Jerome. And with what public jubilee and exultation the Fifth General Council greeted Augustine when it adhered to his teaching unanimously, saying: " We follow Augustine in everything; " we accept everything he has said of the true faith and against heretics! See, my dear brethren, how great he was in the eyes of men; but admire still more the humble and lowly opinion he formed of himself.
Second Part.
It is not unusual for one who is really vile and worthless to look on himself as such; it is no great act of humility for one who has nothing praiseworthy or laudable to be humble, as St. Bernard says. Thus no one is astonished to see a beggar going on his knees to ask for a piece of bread, or calling public attention to his torn and ragged garments. No one is surprised to see a peasant's servant come out of the stable covered with dirt; no one would call him an humble beggar, an humble servant, on that account. But it is a most amazing, rare, and prodigious thing for one to look on himself as vile and unworthy who is praised and esteemed by every one on account of his great and wonderful excellence. " It is," says St. Bernard, " a great and rare virtue to be ignorant of thy greatness, although thou really dost great things," and art therefore high in the esteem of men.
What occasions and opportunities the great Augustine had to become proud and puffed-up! But there is a vast difference between the light of an earthly fire and the light of the sun; such is the beautiful thought of St. John Chrysostom; the earthly fire always throws its flame on high, while the sun pours its rays down on earth. Augustine shone before the world like the sun; the higher his light ascended outwardly the lower he sank in his own estimation. No ambitious man ever sought honor as eagerly as he avoided honor and distinction. His fear and terror of dignities, when his name first began to be celebrated, drove him out of the cities into the solitude of the desert, lest the people might call upon him to accept a high ecclesiastical position. He begged of his bishop, who had called on him to preach to the people, to allow him to remain hidden, and not to impose a bur den on his shoulders for which he felt himself unable. And even at the time when others are wont to be filled with consolation, and to shed tears of joy, namely, when he was forced to accept sacerdotal ordination, Augustine was seen, as he himself confesses, to shed tears of sorrow and pain forced from him by his humility. " Violence is done to me," said he; they wish to raise me to that dignity, a miserable sinner, who have done so much evil, and to send me to take into my hands on the altar the precious body and blood of Jesus Christ. And what terror seized him when, against his will, he was forced to accept the bishop's pastoral staff! Ah, he sighed, that is evidently a punishment brought upon me at last by my sins; now am I made to feel the anger of the just God who is wroth with me; I am made bishop, and the only reason I can find for it is that God wishes to punish me!
And as much as he feared all honors, and tried to avoid them as real misfortunes, which is indeed a humility rare enough amongst men, so much also did he in the midst of the dignities which he could not escape seek his own humiliation and shame and disgrace before the world. And he discovered a way of satisfying his craving in this respect which in such a great man seems to be almost incomprehensible. I will refer in proof of this only to two of his books: one in which he publicly retracts the errors and mistakes that had crept into his former works and writings; another in which he details with the utmost minuteness the sins of his youth, and lays them before the world with all their circumstances. I leave it to yourselves to judge in which of the two he showed the greater humility. With regard to the first: think, my dear brethren, what it must be to retract one's own words; to say: I did not understand properly; I made a mistake. What a hard thing that must be for a learn ed, renowned man occupying a high position! Whence comes the obstinacy of so many heretics, who maintain their errors against the known truth, except from their unwillingness to acknowledge that they have made a mistake? Even amongst good friends, between man and wife, what quarrels arise sometimes from some miserable, worthless cause in which the one says yes, the other no, merely because each wishes to be in the right and neither will confess to a mistake! For all look on it as a shame and disgrace to be mistaken in their judgments. Yet Augustine, that man who was everywhere considered as an oracle of learning and wisdom, actually seeks to draw that shame on him self; the man who was able to confute all heretics accuses him self, not merely of one, but of several errors! But you may think that it is no great matter after all; for it is only human to make mistakes, especially in abstruse matters, and therefore his humility may not have been so very great in this respect.
Be that as it may, what do you think of his second proof of humility? Augustine describes publicly all his hideous, hidden sins which he had committed from childhood, even in thought - sins that otherwise could not have come to the knowledge of any one. What shame he put himself to! Or, to speak better, what unheard-of humility was his! I find among the servants of God many humble souls, who, to increase the glory of their Creator, related and made known to the world the virtues and graces they had received from God. Thus the patient Job boasts to his friends that he was an eye to the blind, a foot to the lame, the father of orphans, the protector of the poor; St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Corinthians, describes in detail all the sufferings he had to endure in his apostolic labors, and the visions he had. I find many humble souls among the saints of God who indeed tried with all possible diligence to hide their special virtues and gifts, lest they should be looked on and esteemed as saints; but when their honor and innocence were calumniated they spared no effort to defend themselves, and to give the lie to their defamers. Samuel was humble, as we know from Scripture; but,, to stop the mouth of the calumniator, he did not hesitate to show with great freedom before all the people how honestly he had always acted in matters of justice, and how far he was removed from all greed of gain and avarice. Judith was humble, yet how careful she was on her return from the camp of Holofernes to prove to the people that she had suffered no indignity, that her purity had been protected by an angel, and that she had returned from the camp as chaste as she had entered it: "As the same Lord liveth," she said, with an oath, "His angel hath been my keeper, both going hence and abiding there, and returning from thence hither; and the Lord hath not suffered me, His handmaid, to be defiled." I also find among the servants of God saints who remained silent and left their defence to God when they were calumniated; but of one who comes forward of his own accord, and makes known his own wickedness and the filth of his life, I cannot find any example except Augustine.
Nothing is more common for the sinner than to try to conceal his guilt. "Everyone that doth evil," says Our Lord Himself, "hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, that his works may not be reproved." Hence the care with which each one tries to hide his vices, to palliate them, to offer a hundred excuses for them. Hence that most reprehensible shame that often closes the mouth of the penitent in the confessional, prevents him from disclosing some shameful sin, and often brings him so far that he bears about with him his whole life long the abominable filth of sin, preferring to sacrifice the friendship of God, his soul, and heaven, and to choose the eternal pains of hell rather than make known to one priest, who is bound to the strictest secrecy, the crime he is guilty of. How would it be if one had to confess publicly before a whole city? Tell me, my dear brethren, there are very few of us here in church; imagine an angel coming in my place, and saying out loud: That man, that woman, that boy, that girl, that religious, that priest has lived in such-and-such a manner; he has entertained such-and-such abominable thoughts; he has said so-and-so; he has done from youth upwards such-and-such bad actions; and thus relating all our sins, mentioning names and circumstances; what would be our feelings in such a case? With what shame we should try to creep under the benches and hide ourselves! How quickly would those whose consciences reprove them seek the door, and rush out of the church, lest their turn should come! For my part, I should be one of the first to run away. And yet there are so few of us here to be ashamed of!
O admirable Augustine, to what shame thy own voluntary humility brought thee! He discloses and reveals his most hideous and abominable sins sins that men are most anxious to hide through shame; and that he does, not to one, or a hundred, or a thousand people, but to the whole wide world; not to all those who were then present merely, but to all who are to live in this world; and he describes them in a published book that has now so often appeared in print, and is still read by every one, and will always be read. And what may well excite our admiration, of all the books written by him there is none adorned with such art of eloquence, with such choice and elegance of words, with such rare and agreeable subtlety of thought, than that in which he confesses his sins and transgressions. As if he wished to put forward his best efforts to make the book so pleasing that all would read it, that thus his shame might never die among men, and his humiliation might be eternized in their minds. Truly, a great and rare virtue! From this we may form an idea of the wonderful holiness of Augustine, since he united such profound humility with such great gifts and high dignities.
Before concluding, let us cast a glance at ourselves, and see how we are in this particular. To say the thing in a word, my dear brethren, humility is necessary to us all, whether we are great or small, rich or poor, clerics or laymen. Without humility all our good works, all our holiness, are nothing. We may be as pious as we please, spend a long time in prayer, mortify ourselves as much as we can, but if humility is wanting all is worth nothing; we are building without a foundation, resting on sand, high trees without fruit, golden vessels that are empty; for the foundation, the kernel, the guardian, nay, as it were, the soul of all virtue and piety is humility alone. As the humble Augustine says: "He who does good works without humility carries dust in the wind." It is not the high mountains but the lowly valleys that are filled with water; not the proud but the humble soul that is filled with grace by God. Once for all Our Lord has pronounced sentence: " Unless you become as little children," that is, small in your own eyes, "you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." Therefore I conclude with the words that St. Bernard says of the humility of the Blessed Virgin Mary: When we admire the great Augustine, and see that we cannot reach his holiness, let us try to imitate his humility, and that will be enough. We shall find abundant opportunities for this if we wish; every hour and minute we can practise humility. We can be silent when accused, and confess our faults when in the wrong; we can restrain and overcome ourselves when we would willingly contradict; we can beg forgiveness when we have offended others; we can greet, visit, and show respect to one against whom we feel a natural aversion; we can bear patiently with crosses, trials, contempt, and shame, thinking that we have deserved far worse on account of our sins; when we have sinned we can disclose our sins in confession honestly and candidly; and there are many other ways in which we may every day of our lives show whether or not we are in earnest about practising humility. So let us try to imitate the humble Augustine, and it will suffice for us; that alone will make us great with the great Augustine in heaven. Amen.