SIXTY-THIRD SERMON
ON THE GREAT ST. AUGUSTINE.
Subject.
Augustine, from being a great sinner, became a great saint, and therefore is worthy of admiration. Preached on the feast of St. Augustine.
Text.
"He shall be called great." (Matt 5:19)
Introduction.
It would be a vain and useless labor for me to undertake to day to prove that Augustine is a great saint; there is nothing better known in the world, both among the learned and the ignorant; it is proclaimed by the dumb books in libraries, written by pens in the universities, spoken of by tongues in the pulpits; whenever the name of Augustine is mentioned you hear the great Augustine spoken of. So that one who has even a little knowledge of the Saint must, whenever he thinks of him, look on him as a great saint. There is one thing, my dear brethren, that excites my surprise, and that is that he was at first a great sinner, and yet became a great saint. That is what I mean to speak of to-day in his praise.
Plan of Discourse.
Augustine, from being a great sinner, became a great saint, and therefore he is a wonderful saint. Such is the whole subject of this panegyric. Let no sinner despair of conversion; let no just man be anxious on account of his past sins. Such shall be the brief moral lesson.
Give us Thy grace to profit by it, Lord, who didst work such wonders in Thy servant Augustine, through the intercession of Mary and of the holy angels.
St. Gregory distinguishes three classes of sinners: there are some. he says, into whose hearts and consciences sin creeps, but does not remain, because they free themselves at once from it by repentance; there are others in whom sin remains for a time, yet it does not rule in their soul, nor gain the upper hand, because it is not often committed or repeated; the third class consists of those in whom sin takes up a fixed dwelling, and has the mastery, because by being constantly repeated it fastens itself in the soul, takes root, and becomes habitual. The first class is the best (although no sinner is good for anything), and is the easiest; of cure. For even a pious man, who is concerned for his salvation, sometimes falls grievously, either through weakness, or an unforeseen occasion, or a violent temptation; but since he immediately condemns and repents of his wickedness, he is not in such great danger of dying in sin and being lost. The second class is more difficult of cure; for when repentance is deferred it requires a special grace and protection from God to guard one from further sins. The third class is the worst of all, and those who compose it can hardly be cured without a miraculous grace, not to speak of bringing them to sanctity.
For who does not know and experience what tyranny is exercised by an old and inveterate habit, especially in vice? It is like
a miracle to abandon at once that which has occupied the heart
and its love and desire. It is like a miracle to raise up to heaven
your thoughts that had been sunk in carnal lusts, and to lead a
holy, pure, and heavenly life. A fresh wound is easily healed;
but when it grows old, and begins to fester, medicine is of no use;
it must be cut and burnt in order to preserve the body in life.
So it is with the sickness of the soul, with the habit of sin when
it becomes inveterate. This is what Christ wishes us to learn,
as our St. Augustine remarks, by the three persons whom He
raised from the dead. In the case of the daughter of Jairus
He had only to speak two words: " Damsel, arise." The son
of the widow of Nairn required something more; Our Lord
touched his bier, and spoke the impressive words: " Young man,
1 say to thee, arise." But in the raising of Lazarus, who
had been four days in the grave, and had begun to putrefy, Our
Lord " groaned in the spirit." He began to sigh and weep; He
raised His eyes to heaven, and prayed to His heavenly Father:
"He cried with a loud voice: Lazarus, come forth." Whence
such a great difference in Our Lord's mode of acting? Did His
omnipotence require more labor in one case than in the other?
No; that cannot be. But, as Augustine says, Our Lord wished
to show that it is harder to convert a sinner who has lain a long
time in the grave of sin than one who has only recently commenced to sin. And he assigns this reason: in the first case the
passions and evil inclinations become continually stronger and
increase; the desires are more violent; and thus there results a
sort of agreeable repose in sin, so that the sinner is pleased with
his condition, and has neither wish nor desire to free himself;
nay, in time there arises a sort of necessity, a second nature,
impelling him to sin; and to change that, although the man
may wish to do so, an extraordinary grace from God is required.
Nay, the Holy Ghost, by the Prophet Jeremias, seems to make a sort of impossibility of the conversion of such a sinner: "If quires the Ethiopian can change his skin, or the leopard his spots, you also may do well when you have learned evil." When a vicious habit has begun to take root from youth upwards, then the conversion and amendment of the sinner is still more difficult, nay, is almost to be despaired of. The elephant, monstrous as he is, may be tamed if taken in hand when quite young, and trained to bend the knee and wait on one like a dog, a training that he never forgets as he grows older; but if he remains in the forest until he is grown up, and the nerves and bones of the feet become hard, there is no use in trying to train him; he is and will remain an untamed, wild animal. "A young man according to his way," says the word of God in the Book of Proverbs, " even when he is old he will not depart from it; " a and by the Prophet Job: " His bones shall be filled with the vices of his youth, and they shall sleep with him in the dust." When the man whose son was grievously tormented by the demon came to Our Lord, and complained that the disciples could not drive out the evil spirit, Christ asked him at once: " How long is it since this hath happened unto him?" And the father answered: " From his in fancy." Truly, a curious question to be asked by Him to whom all things are known! Did not Our Lord know more about it than the father himself? Why, then, did He ask? The Gloss answers: That we might understand whence came the difficulty experienced by the disciples in freeing the youth from the devil. As if to say: Since the evil one has had possession of him from his infancy, what wonder is it that he has struggled so long, and refuses to go out at the command of these poor fishermen? This is a case which requires the almighty hand of God.
There, my dear brethren, you have a sketch of the deplorable state of sin in which Augustine was before his conversion. I will not and may not bring forward any other proof of this but his own words, in which he, to his own glory however, publishes, through humility, his shame to the world of his time and to all posterity. "I went away from Thee," he sighs forth, " and I went wrong, my God! " I have gone astray like a lost sheep; I have abandoned Thee worse than the prodigal son, and have sacrificed to vice the substance Thou hast given me: my memory, understanding, will, eyes, ears, and my other senses. And what vices were they? Those which are the fountain and origin of all sins, namely, pride, greed of gold, and impurity. These I have pursued day and night; so that sin strove with sin within me, to see which should have the greater part of me. And when didst thou commence to commit those sins? As soon, he answers, as I could make use of my reason, and barely knew what sin was. I was hardly a few spans long in my body, and was already full- grown in vice; I was still tender and weak in my members, but they were hardened in wickedness; such a little boy, and such a great sinner! My good mother did her best to teach me to love and fear God; but my father did not agree with her, and took my part. I constantly heard good advice from my mother; but I was so corrupted that I looked on it as womanly weakness. She became sick from grief, shed copious tears, sent forth sigh after sigh into my ears; but I laughed at her, and appealed to my father, who always said that I was right, and took little trouble to enquire into the life I was leading before God. Oh, truly unhappy the children that are brought up by such parents, who are opposed to each other in matters that concern the welfare of the soul! Fathers and mothers, you think those children of yours, be they boys or girls, innocent angels, and care little with whom they associate; and if by your negligence one may say of them that they are little children and great sinners, what will become of them after they have been fed on the poisonous milk of vice?
Hear further how things went with the ill-reared Augustine. He describes it himself, with bitter tears: After having thus spent the years of my childhood, and attained the age of sixteen, vice held such sway over me that I could no longer hold my wantonness and wickedness in check, nor be content with being a secret sinner, but I must needs become a public leader of the godless. I lost all fear and the shame that is innate in man, and exulted and gloried in the most disgraceful and abominable excesses; I could not understand how a man could be a man and lead a good and pure life. And in addition to the perversity by which I endeavored to excel my companions in vice, I pretended to be more guilty than I was, and looked on it as a matter for boasting to be the worst of all; I was ashamed not to be the most shameless of all.
From this perverse will of mine came a darkening and blindness of the mind; I fell into an error concerning the faith, and joined the sect of the Manichaeans, which seemed to me the best of all, because it suited my beastly lusts and the freedom I allowed my senses; so that I became half Manichaean, half heathen,, and wholly godless. At last I was quite obdurate in wickedness, hardened, and almost despairing. " I was pleased with the disease of carnal lusts, and feared to be healed." If a divine inspiration came to warn me to amend I used to cry out: Not now, Lord, not now! Leave me in my wickedness. For out of my many sins there grew such a habit that it bound me with iron chains, and from the habit there grew the necessity of sinning, and from this necessity the impossibility of conversion and amendment. These were the links of my chain: habit, necessity, despair.
Pardon me, great Saint, for alluding to thy vices when I should rather praise thee! I do not go beyond thy own words and pen, and my sole object is to make the wonder of thy holiness all the greater and more evident. In this thou hast set thy glory before heaven and earth, that in thee and by thee the honor and glory of the grace and mercy of God may be made evident and public before the world. I appeal to the words of St. John Chrysostom, who says that he should do great wrong to the saints who have been converted, and to the goodness and power of God by which their conversion was effected, if we did not bring to light and make known even the gross crimes they committed in their former lives; for from this appears, on the one hand, the greatness of the divine mercy, which so patiently bore so long with such great sinners, so paternally attracted and changed them into such great saints; and on the other hand, we should wrong the magnanimity and the glorious victory and triumph which those holy penitents gained over their nature and their inveterate habits, with the help of divine grace. Truly, the greatest praise of Augustine consists in this, that from a great sinner he became a wonderful saint, so that now all the world honors him.
What think you of this, my dear brethren? What a wonderfully powerful grace it must have been that brought to sanctity one who from childhood had grown up to be a hardened, obdurate, almost despairing sinner! What an incomprehensible victory over self it must have cost Augustine at first to free himself from so many bonds and chains that tied him down, and to begin a holy life diametrically opposed to his former career! He him self cannot sufficiently express his wonder at the change; and if any one had told him in his youth that it would have taken place he would have laughed at the idea, and treated it as ridiculous and impossible. If an angel had appeared to him disguised, and said. Augustine, listen; all that you now regard as the object of your desires, thoughts, wishes; all that now occupies your whole heart and affections you will, after a certain time, hate and detest, condemn and curse. You now laugh at the tears and sighs of your mother; the time will come when you will shed tears of blood for not having paid better attention to her admonitions. Now it seems to you impossible to abstain from sin and carnal lust; the time will come when nothing will appear sweeter to you than to shun all pleasure, and then it will seem to you impossible to commit the least sin against God, and you will not be able to under stand how you could ever have offended Him, how you did not begin to love Him sooner; nor will you have rest or peace until you give yourself altogether to the love of your God. Now in all your actions you seek honor and glory before the world, and part of this honor you place in the fact that you are the most shame less of all; then your humility will bring you so far that you will seek to hide yourself and your great talents, and by publicly confessing your crimes try to bring shame on yourself be fore the world. Now you cannot live without a wanton companion of the opposite sex; the time will come when you will not speak alone even with your own sister. Now you spend your time in gluttony and drunkenness, and all sorts of sensual indulgence; then you will chastise your body by fasting, watching, and wearing the garb of penitence, and you will take the bread out of your own mouth to feed the hungry and indigent stranger. Now you boast of your vices among your companions; then you will never cease to announce the glory of God every where. Now you seek for comrades in sin; the time will come when the world will be filled with convents either founded by you or following your rule, the inmates of which will praise God day and night with prayer, singing, and preaching; while you yourself will learn, before your death, to your great consolation, that in the whole of Africa there is hardly a town or district in which there is not a convent, many of them having a hundred or more religious; and after your death you will see Europe adorned with your spiritual children in countless places. Now you adhere to the false teaching of heretics; then there will be no heretic who will dare to appear before you, no one who will venture to contend with you, no heresy which you will not refute, confound, and put to shame, either with your pen, or by your tongue, or with your published writings. Now you are a slave of the devil, a treacherous, ravening wolf among the sheep of Christ; then you will be called a shepherd of souls, a teacher of teachers, a tongue, a light, a protector, a preserver of the Church of God. Now you are a great sinner; then you will be a saint, and a great saint be fore the world. In your honor will be erected everywhere statues, altars, churches, and temples, while universities and pulpits will ring with the praises of your holiness. I now foretell to you that all this will happen. Tell me, my dear brethren, if this had been said to Augustine when he was buried in the grave of sin, do you think he would have believed it, and not rather treated it as an absurd jest? What! he would have exclaimed; I a saint? It is impossible for me to keep one day from sin; and am I to lead such a pure, perfect, and holy life? It is all nonsense; there cannot be a word of truth in it; it is impossible!
Nevertheless all that was accomplished in Augustine. If, according to the words of the Apostle, the complete fulfilment of the law consists in charity; if the greatness of charity is to be measured by the sanctity of the soul, then we require nothing more to see what a great saint Augustine was than to cast our eyes on his images, in which he is generally represented, in distinction to other saints, with a heart in his hand on fire with love; nothing more is necessary than to read the meditations and soliloquies with God that he has left us amongst his writings, wherein every word we read is, as it were, a spark thrown out by a burning fire of unspeakably sweet and intimate love. Hear a few of his sighs of love, wherewith his books are filled: Sweet Lord, my love, my God, my only love! inflame me altogether with Thy love, that my body and soul and all within me may be burnt and consumed with Thy love! I am consumed in Thee; I have Thee in my heart, on my lips, before my eyes, always, in all places. I have no wish to speak, except with and of Thee; to think, except on Thee; to desire, except Thee. If Thou dost not know that I love Thee, and dost not believe my words, then let the torrents of tears I shed, and that I cannot restrain, speak and bear witness for me how much my soul loves Thee. On other occasions the violence of his love carries him, as it were, out of himself, so that, as is the case with lovers, he cannot find words to express his love, and desires the impossible, and breaks out into the well- known sigh of love: I rejoice, Lord, that Thou art God; but if perchance Augustine could be God, then should I prefer to be Augustine, that Thou mightest be God. wonderful power of divine grace, what extraordinary changes thou canst make in the hearts of men! Now I understand the meaning of those words of the Lord, in which He says that the grace of God can turn the hard stones into children of Abraham. Great Augustine, if it is true, as some say, that during your lifetime you worked no miracle, yet you are in yourself and by yourself the greatest miracle which shows to the world the might of the grace of the Almighty, since from so great a sinner you became such a great saint.
I conclude, my dear brethren, with a brief moral lesson for the good of our souls a lesson supplied me by St. Augustine himself when he speaks of the conversion of St. Paul. What, he asks, was the intention of Jesus Christ in the conversion of Paul? Or rather, what object has the Catholic Church in view when she sets before our eyes this wonderful sanctification of Paul, who at first seemed to be a desperate sinner? What else but to teach all who are honestly minded to return to God that they must have a childlike confidence, that if they only wish they can and will be healed of the maladies of their souls, no matter how great and abominable their sins have been? "If Paul was healed, why should I despair? Why should I not have recourse to the same beneficent hands?" Why should I hes itate to cast myself into the good and fatherly arms of the divine mercy? This may be applied to themselves by all who, being in the state of sin, meditate on the conversion of Augustine, even if their sins are worse and of longer continuance than his. If, they should think if Augustine was healed, why should I despair? If Augustine was converted after having committed so many sins, for such a long time; if from great wickedness he attained to great holiness, why should I despair, as if I could never be converted? No! I can again become a child of God; if I only will, I can be converted and become holy in spite of the multitude and enormity of my past sins, provided only I work with the grace of God! Meanwhile I must and will not hesitate any longer, nor defer my conversion, but take advantage of the first ray of grace. If Augustine had withstood the grace of God any longer; if he had obstinately remained in the filth of sin till old age oh, then indeed would the Church perhaps have no Au gustine, that great light, and hell would have numbered a great demon among its denizens! Therefore this very day I will profit by the mercy of God.
If Augustine was healed, why should I despair? So should you, too, think, just souls, for among you there may be some who, on account of their past sins, allow themselves to be overcome by an inordinate fear, anxiety, and doubt, and give way to a cowardly pusillanimity, so that they dare not cultivate an intimate love of God; they are in a state of half despair, doubting of the pardon of their past offences, or of the fatherly kindness of God, or of their perseverance in good, and especially of their dying a happy death. Say to yourselves: If Augustine was healed; if the good and loving God dealt so favorably and kindly with Augustine, who was such a deplorable sinner, and gave him more graces and favors than He bestowed on many another saint who lived and served Him piously from youth upwards; if Augustine, after such a wicked life, could love his God so intimately and fervently, why should not I then have a childlike, upright, and intimate confidence towards such a good God and Father, provided only that I am really in earnest about serving Him faith fully in future, according to my state, and in loving Him above all things, as Augustine did, with my whole heart? This should be my only care, and then I shall have nothing to fear. This, Lord, is what we are all determined to do, with Thy grace. Amen.