Augustine of Hippo ranks high among the saints of God: a man whose influence among us as a person, churchman, philosopher and theologian, still runs strong. One reason why he is so admired, I am sure, is that he was a sinner before he became a saint. This offers encouragement to the rest of us sinners.

Augustine was a native of Tagaste in Numidia, a Roman colony on the Mediterranean coast of Africa. The father was Patricius, a pagan. The mother was Monica, a Christian whom we venerate as Saint Monica. She bore several children. Her exemplary Christian faith eventually led to the deathbed conversion of Patricius. However, her brilliant son Augustine, although enrolled as a catechumen for baptism, and taught Christian basics by Monica, drifted away from Christian faith and morality, and caused her years of pain by his thought-style and life-style.

Augustine was to admit to all this years later in his famous spiritual autobiography, the Confessions. His interest in literature led him from the school in Tagaste to the bigger school in the major city of Carthage. As a student of the spoken and written word, and increasingly of philosophy, he fell in with proponents of the Manichaean heresy, and also entered a common-law marriage, fathering one son. At the root of his misbehavior was youthful vanity and ambition. Next, for nine years he ran his own schools in Tagaste and Carthage.

By 383 be had come to reject Manichee ideas but he then took flight to Rome (without telling Monica). After teaching there for a while, he went north to Milan. At Milan he was welcomed as an experienced pedagogue. Among those who paid him respect was the great St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, a man who before becoming a cleric had served as governor, and was a noted public speaker. Augustine used to go to hear his sermons–not, as he assured himself, because of their Christian content, but to study the bishop’s oratorical techniques. Meanwhile Monica had joined her son at Milano. Gradually Augustine became convinced of the truth of Christianity. He dismissed his spouse, but he still felt the tug of the flesh, and prayed, “Give me chastity, but not yet awhile.”

Eventually, however, God rewarded his good intentions by turning his eyes marvelously to a passage from St. Paul. As he read Paul’s words, he received the grace of total conversion. This was in 386. He was baptized the following year by St. Ambrose. Then he formed a quasi-religious community, including his mother, dedicated to study and prayer. Late in 387 he decided to return to Africa, to continue there his work for the Church. Monica died en route, happy to have seen her prayers answered for her son.

At Tagaste, Augustine and his friends continued their quasi-monastic life. He had no thought then of becoming a priest, but in 391 Bishop Valerius of Hippo persuaded him to accept ordination. Four years later he was consecrated coadjutor bishop of Hippo with right of succession, and he succeeded shortly afterward when Valerius died.

During the rest of his life, Bishop Augustine ransomed his wayward years by being a religious leader in every sense. He perfected a religious rule for his monastic group, and also founded a community of religious women. He used his own funds where necessary to aid the poor. A friendly and affectionate person, he made himself available to all inquirers by personal contact or by letter. Meanwhile he polished his knowledge of theology, and by working to refute current errors, became an expert theologian, consulted widely on matters of scripture and faith. Nowhere was his expertise greater than in the theology of divine grace. (He had learned much about God’s grace through his own spiritual experiences!)

After thirty-five years of laborious work, the Bishop of Hippo died of a fever at the moment when the Germanic Vandals were besieging his see-city. At that moment he found fulfillment of the prayer he had addressed to God in his Confessions: “Thou has made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”  --Father Robert F. McNamara

(Year C). The greatest glory of predestination and grace is the Savior himself, the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

What, I ask you, did his human nature do in the way of good works or of faith to merit beforehand this glory? Give me an answer to this question: How did his humanity merit to be taken up by the Word, co-eternal with the Father, into unity with his person and so to be the only-begotten Son of God? What goodness, of whatever kind, did he possess beforehand? What had he done, what faith had he shown, what request had he made, that he should attain to that point of preeminence, beyond all human power of description? Was it not through the action of the Word in taking this humanity to himself that, from the moment when he came into existence, this human being came into existence as the only Son of God?

We must keep before our eyes the very source of grace, taking its origin in Christ, our head, and flowing through all his members according to the capacity of each. The grace which makes any man a Christian from the first moment of his coming to believe is the same grace which made this man the Christ from his coming to be as man.

The Spirit through whom men are reborn is the same Spirit through whom Christ was born. The Spirit by whom we receive forgiveness of sins is the same Spirit who brought it about that Christ knew no sin.

Clearly, God knew that he would do all this. The predestination of the saints is the same predestination that reached its greatest glory in the Saint above all other saints. Who can deny this among those who understand correctly the utterances of Truth? For we have been taught that inasmuch as the son of God became man, the Lord of glory himself was the object of predestination.

Jesus then was predestined. He who was to be the son of David in his human nature was to be the Son of God in power through the action of the Spirit of holiness, for he was born of the Holy Spirit and of the Virgin Mary. This unique taking to himself of a human nature by God the Word came about in such a way, too mysterious for our understanding, that with truth and accuracy the Word could be called at one and the same time the Son of God and the son of man: son of man because of the human nature that was taken, and Son of God because it was the only-begotten God who took that human nature. We are not to believe in God as a quaternity but as a trinity.

Human nature was in this case predestined to so marvelous, so sublime, so perfect a dignity that it could not be raised higher; just as the divine nature itself could not demean itself any lower than by taking human nature with all its weakness, even to dying on a cross. Just as one Christ was predestined to be our head, so we, the many, were predestined to be his members.

Let there be no mention here of human merits; they were lost through Adam. Let God’s grace reign supreme, as it does through Jesus Christ, our Lord, the only Son of God, the one Lord. If anyone can find in Christ, our head, any merits preceding his unique birth, he may look also for merits in ourselves preceding our rebirth as his many members. (The Predestination of the Saints)