In the Confessions, by Saint Augustine, Augustine addressed himself articulately
and passionately to the persistent questions that stirred the minds and hearts
of men since time began. The Confessions tells a story in the form of a long
conversion with God. Through this conversion to Catholic Christianity, Augustine
encounters many aspects of love. These forms of love help guide him towards an
ultimate relationship with God. His restless heart finally finds peace and rest
in God at the end of The Confessions. Augustine finds many ways in which he can
find peace in God. He is genuinely sorry for having turned away from God, the
source of peace and happiness. Augustine is extremely thankful for having been
given the opportunity to live with God. Augustine uses love as his gate to
God’s grace. Throughout The Confessions, love and wisdom, the desire to love
and be loved, and his love for his concubine, are all driving forces for
Augustine’s desire to find peace in God. The death of his friend upsets him
deeply, but also allows him to pursue God to become a faithful Christian.
Augustine often experiences darkness, blindness, and confusion while attempting
to find rest in God, but he knows that when he eventually finds him his restless
heart will be saved. Augustine started out in childhood with a restless heart
because he had to live in two different worlds. These worlds consisted of that
of his mother’s religious faith, and the world of everything else. These two
worlds confused and disturbed Augustine as a child. In his mother’s world,
talk consisted of Christ the Savior and about the mighty god who helps us
especially to go to heaven. In the other world, talk was about achieving. It
seems as if Augustine felt that if he were to live in both of these world’s,
his life would turn out to be nothing. He believed he would not accomplish
anything he would be remembered for. He became unhappy with the idea of his life
amounting to nothing. This is why Augustine turned to love. He felt that love
might help him have a direct purpose in life and would help him through his
conversion. Love should not be that of evil. Saint Augustine searched for the
answer of a question that asked if love reaches out hopelessly and harmfully,
how can it turn around to be productive and wholesome to the human soul? Love
became a necessity for all people. For Augustine, the answer to this question
was love. The first love must be for the love of God in Augustine’s mind. It
must come before all other forms of love. Augustine states that, “The thought
of you stirs him so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you,
because you made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in
you” (I,1). Augustine talks of many different forms of love. Another form that
he talks about and demonstrates many times in The Confessions is the desire to
love and to be loved. Augustine’s relation to his mistress focuses on the
problem of restless loves, while showing that Augustine had the desire to love
and the desire to be loved. For one thing, he went to Carthage wanting to be in
love. He evidently was not in Carthage long before he found his mistress. Many
young men stayed with a woman until the time came to marry them back then. This
is what Augustine did. He states that, “In those days I lived with a woman,
not my lawful wedded wife but a mistress whom I had chosen for no special reason
but that my restless passions had alighted on her. But she was the only one and
I was faithful to her” (IV,4). The love of wisdom is an experience that
touches Augustine very deeply. The book that moves him to a great degree is the
Hortensius by Cicero. “In Greek, the word philosophy means love of wisdom, and
it was with this love that the Hortensius inflamed me” (III,4). The reading
caused him to reach toward God, even though he had only learned of God seriously
through Monica. It helped him to develop a different outlook on God and take
life more seriously. In this love of wisdom both the love of heart and
enlightenment of mind came together. This love was not dry, but it became a
flaming passion that came alive in him. Cicero renewed this love for Augustine.
Augustine decided that he would love first all of God’s truth and all other
things would find their place and take proportion. When speaking about the
Hortensius, Augustine says, “It altered my outlook on life. It changes my
prayers to you, O Lord, and provided me with new hopes and aspirations. All my
empty dreams suddenly lost their charm and my heart began to throb with a
bewildering passion for the wisdom of eternal truth” (III,4). Wisdom itself
meant that the one true order of the world, is what makes everything stick
together. Augustine later recognized this as God’s truth and word, by which
God had made all things. This wisdom came into the world as Christ.
Augustine’s conversion is clear in outline and was greatly influenced by
different variations of love. From childhood he had loved the name of Christ and
associated with his mother about this and about her love for him. Also, when he
read Cicero it summoned him to embrace the truth and love the wisdom of knowing
the truth. He later experienced renewed love for the church and for Catholic
things from Ambrose. Once God had come to him in compelling love, his surrender
to a new life simply replaced, if it did not completely abolish, the old
tormented division. The death of a very close friend of Augustine’s made him
realize that all love should be rooted in God. All our love starts with God’s
seed, and over time, new branches of love will grow and flourish. Augustine’s
friend became critically ill with a fever. While he laid unconscious, his friend
was baptized a Christian. Eventually, Augustine’s friend passed away and
Augustine felt extreme remorse and grief. Augustine reflected that all human
love is destined to perish unless this love is grounded in the eternal God who
never changes. While love exists for those individual souls who please us, this
love should always have an origin from God. All these themes of love helped and
guided Augustine to his conversion. His conversion was the discovery of a new
self and the discovery of the new world he found through this conversion. The
conversion taught him truth. Augustine discovered the redirection of his
scattered loves first by waking to an overwhelming desire to find the truth,
especially about his personal situation. His desire to know wisdom, which was
activated by Cicero, brought about a new love for Christ, the Word or truth of
God. Full engagement with the love of Christ was still yet to come for
Augustine. His mind was still not at peace or satisfied with any one direction.
Probably the most important and influential form of love that Augustine had was
love for God and love for Christ. Augustine started to realize the important
roles that Christ and God played in his life. A whole new realm was seen by
Augustine and he opened his life up to God more and more each day by talking to
him and letting him now that he loved him very much. Augustine states, “Then,
O Lord, you laid your most gentle, most merciful finger on my heart and set my
thoughts in order, for I began to realize that I believed countless things which
I had never seen or which I had taken place when I was not there to see”
(VI,5). Adhering to God as love’s priority proved a more extended way than he
had imagined. It helped to shape his life, his mind and his beliefs. He never
realized until now what a huge difference it makes in one’s life when it is
opened up to love and love of Christ. The answer lies in God’s grace for
Augustine. These answers are to his utmost difficult questions on life and
faith. The subtle and cunning loves of the heart had defined Augustine’s
journey from the first. At no time in his life had he been without love, but he
had loved in scattered, hidden, and conflicting ways. He had loved Monica. He
had loved the image and name of Christ, he even at one point loved evil which
scared him. Augustine felt the need to redirect his love and this redirection
would lead him in the way and light of God. Augustine seems to be dissatisfied
with himself and his need for God. Through The Confessions he leaves himself and
his past to praising God and loving him. Augustine hopes to teach others about
that love which God placed in him that led him to an eternal relationship with
God. All of Augustine’s loves in turn became love of Christ. Although
Augustine might not have realized this, it is obviously true. At first he was
redirecting his loves directly to Christ, but finally he realized all his love
WAS for Christ. Augustine found a place in God that he had never imagined could
happen. His guilty restless heart finally found rest in God. The Confessions is
the story of a conversion. This conversion took place in the garden; a
conversion that took place from the time he read Cicero at age eighteen; a
conversion that took place across his whole life. The story was not just of
having arrived at a certain point, but of the long way around to get there. Love
played a significant role in this conversion. The old restless heart that
Augustine once had finally found peace and rest in God. It helped guide him
towards God and Christ in a positive way that it influenced the rest of his
life. In the Confessions, by Saint Augustine, Augustine addressed himself
articulately and passionately to the persistent questions that stirred the minds
and hearts of men since time began. The Confessions tells a story in the form of
a long conversion with God. Through this conversion to Catholic Christianity,
Augustine encounters many aspects of love. These forms of love help guide him
towards an ultimate relationship with God. His restless heart finally finds
peace and rest in God at the end of The Confessions. Augustine finds many ways
in which he can find peace in God. He is genuinely sorry for having turned away
from God, the source of peace and happiness. Augustine is extremely thankful for
having been given the opportunity to live with God. Augustine uses love as his
gate to God’s grace. Throughout The Confessions, love and wisdom, the desire
to love and be loved, and his love for his concubine, are all driving forces for
Augustine’s desire to find peace in God. The death of his friend upsets him
deeply, but also allows him to pursue God to become a faithful Christian.
Augustine often experiences darkness, blindness, and confusion while attempting
to find rest in God, but he knows that when he eventually finds him his restless
heart will be saved. Augustine started out in childhood with a restless heart
because he had to live in two different worlds. These worlds consisted of that
of his mother’s religious faith, and the world of everything else. These two
worlds confused and disturbed Augustine as a child. In his mother’s world,
talk consisted of Christ the Savior and about the mighty god who helps us
especially to go to heaven. In the other world, talk was about achieving. It
seems as if Augustine felt that if he were to live in both of these world’s,
his life would turn out to be nothing. He believed he would not accomplish
anything he would be remembered for. He became unhappy with the idea of his life
amounting to nothing. This is why Augustine turned to love. He felt that love
might help him have a direct purpose in life and would help him through his
conversion. Love should not be that of evil. Saint Augustine searched for the
answer of a question that asked if love reaches out hopelessly and harmfully,
how can it turn around to be productive and wholesome to the human soul? Love
became a necessity for all people. For Augustine, the answer to this question
was love. The first love must be for the love of God in Augustine’s mind. It
must come before all other forms of love. Augustine states that, “The thought
of you stirs him so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you,
because you made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in
you” (I,1). Augustine talks of many different forms of love. Another form that
he talks about and demonstrates many times in The Confessions is the desire to
love and to be loved. Augustine’s relation to his mistress focuses on the
problem of restless loves, while showing that Augustine had the desire to love
and the desire to be loved. For one thing, he went to Carthage wanting to be in
love. He evidently was not in Carthage long before he found his mistress. Many
young men stayed with a woman until the time came to marry them back then. This
is what Augustine did. He states that, “In those days I lived with a woman,
not my lawful wedded wife but a mistress whom I had chosen for no special reason
but that my restless passions had alighted on her. But she was the only one and
I was faithful to her” (IV,4). The love of wisdom is an experience that
touches Augustine very deeply. The book that moves him to a great degree is the
Hortensius by Cicero. “In Greek, the word philosophy means love of wisdom, and
it was with this love that the Hortensius inflamed me” (III,4). The reading
caused him to reach toward God, even though he had only learned of God seriously
through Monica. It helped him to develop a different outlook on God and take
life more seriously. In this love of wisdom both the love of heart and
enlightenment of mind came together. This love was not dry, but it became a
flaming passion that came alive in him. Cicero renewed this love for Augustine.
Augustine decided that he would love first all of God’s truth and all other
things would find their place and take proportion. When speaking about the
Hortensius, Augustine says, “It altered my outlook on life. It changes my
prayers to you, O Lord, and provided me with new hopes and aspirations. All my
empty dreams suddenly lost their charm and my heart began to throb with a
bewildering passion for the wisdom of eternal truth” (III,4). Wisdom itself
meant that the one true order of the world, is what makes everything stick
together. Augustine later recognized this as God’s truth and word, by which
God had made all things. This wisdom came into the world as Christ.
Augustine’s conversion is clear in outline and was greatly influenced by
different variations of love. From childhood he had loved the name of Christ and
associated with his mother about this and about her love for him. Also, when he
read Cicero it summoned him to embrace the truth and love the wisdom of knowing
the truth. He later experienced renewed love for the church and for Catholic
things from Ambrose. Once God had come to him in compelling love, his surrender
to a new life simply replaced, if it did not completely abolish, the old
tormented division. The death of a very close friend of Augustine’s made him
realize that all love should be rooted in God. All our love starts with God’s
seed, and over time, new branches of love will grow and flourish. Augustine’s
friend became critically ill with a fever. While he laid unconscious, his friend
was baptized a Christian. Eventually, Augustine’s friend passed away and
Augustine felt extreme remorse and grief. Augustine reflected that all human
love is destined to perish unless this love is grounded in the eternal God who
never changes. While love exists for those individual souls who please us, this
love should always have an origin from God. All these themes of love helped and
guided Augustine to his conversion. His conversion was the discovery of a new
self and the discovery of the new world he found through this conversion. The
conversion taught him truth. Augustine discovered the redirection of his
scattered loves first by waking to an overwhelming desire to find the truth,
especially about his personal situation. His desire to know wisdom, which was
activated by Cicero, brought about a new love for Christ, the Word or truth of
God. Full engagement with the love of Christ was still yet to come for
Augustine. His mind was still not at peace or satisfied with any one direction.
Probably the most important and influential form of love that Augustine had was
love for God and love for Christ. Augustine started to realize the important
roles that Christ and God played in his life. A whole new realm was seen by
Augustine and he opened his life up to God more and more each day by talking to
him and letting him now that he loved him very much. Augustine states, “Then,
O Lord, you laid your most gentle, most merciful finger on my heart and set my
thoughts in order, for I began to realize that I believed countless things which
I had never seen or which I had taken place when I was not there to see”
(VI,5). Adhering to God as love’s priority proved a more extended way than he
had imagined. It helped to shape his life, his mind and his beliefs. He never
realized until now what a huge difference it makes in one’s life when it is
opened up to love and love of Christ. The answer lies in God’s grace for
Augustine. These answers are to his utmost difficult questions on life and
faith. The subtle and cunning loves of the heart had defined Augustine’s
journey from the first. At no time in his life had he been without love, but he
had loved in scattered, hidden, and conflicting ways. He had loved Monica. He
had loved the image and name of Christ, he even at one point loved evil which
scared him. Augustine felt the need to redirect his love and this redirection
would lead him in the way and light of God. Augustine seems to be dissatisfied
with himself and his need for God. Through The Confessions he leaves himself and
his past to praising God and loving him. Augustine hopes to teach others about
that love which God placed in him that led him to an eternal relationship with
God. All of Augustine’s loves in turn became love of Christ. Although
Augustine might not have realized this, it is obviously true. At first he was
redirecting his loves directly to Christ, but finally he realized all his love
WAS for Christ. Augustine found a place in God that he had never imagined could
happen. His guilty restless heart finally found rest in God. The Confessions is
the story of a conversion. This conversion took place in the garden; a
conversion that took place from the time he read Cicero at age eighteen; a
conversion that took place across his whole life. The story was not just of
having arrived at a certain point, but of the long way around to get there. Love
played a significant role in this conversion. The old restless heart that
Augustine once had finally found peace and rest in God. It helped guide him
towards God and Christ in a positive way that it influenced the rest of his
life. In the Confessions, by Saint Augustine, Augustine addressed himself
articulately and passionately to the persistent questions that stirred the minds
and hearts of men since time began. The Confessions tells a story in the form of
a long conversion with God. Through this conversion to Catholic Christianity,
Augustine encounters many aspects of love. These forms of love help guide him
towards an ultimate relationship with God. His restless heart finally finds
peace and rest in God at the end of The Confessions. Augustine finds many ways
in which he can find peace in God. He is genuinely sorry for having turned away
from God, the source of peace and happiness. Augustine is extremely thankful for
having been given the opportunity to live with God. Augustine uses love as his
gate to God’s grace. Throughout The Confessions, love and wisdom, the desire
to love and be loved, and his love for his concubine, are all driving forces for
Augustine’s desire to find peace in God. The death of his friend upsets him
deeply, but also allows him to pursue God to become a faithful Christian.
Augustine often experiences darkness, blindness, and confusion while attempting
to find rest in God, but he knows that when he eventually finds him his restless
heart will be saved. Augustine started out in childhood with a restless heart
because he had to live in two different worlds. These worlds consisted of that
of his mother’s religious faith, and the world of everything else. These two
worlds confused and disturbed Augustine as a child. In his mother’s world,
talk consisted of Christ the Savior and about the mighty god who helps us
especially to go to heaven. In the other world, talk was about achieving. It
seems as if Augustine felt that if he were to live in both of these world’s,
his life would turn out to be nothing. He believed he would not accomplish
anything he would be remembered for. He became unhappy with the idea of his life
amounting to nothing. This is why Augustine turned to love. He felt that love
might help him have a direct purpose in life and would help him through his
conversion. Love should not be that of evil. Saint Augustine searched for the
answer of a question that asked if love reaches out hopelessly and harmfully,
how can it turn around to be productive and wholesome to the human soul? Love
became a necessity for all people. For Augustine, the answer to this question
was love. The first love must be for the love of God in Augustine’s mind. It
must come before all other forms of love. Augustine states that, “The thought
of you stirs him so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you,
because you made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in
you” (I,1). Augustine talks of many different forms of love. Another form that
he talks about and demonstrates many times in The Confessions is the desire to
love and to be loved. Augustine’s relation to his mistress focuses on the
problem of restless loves, while showing that Augustine had the desire to love
and the desire to be loved. For one thing, he went to Carthage wanting to be in
love. He evidently was not in Carthage long before he found his mistress. Many
young men stayed with a woman until the time came to marry them back then. This
is what Augustine did. He states that, “In those days I lived with a woman,
not my lawful wedded wife but a mistress whom I had chosen for no special reason
but that my restless passions had alighted on her. But she was the only one and
I was faithful to her” (IV,4). The love of wisdom is an experience that
touches Augustine very deeply. The book that moves him to a great degree is the
Hortensius by Cicero. “In Greek, the word philosophy means love of wisdom, and
it was with this love that the Hortensius inflamed me” (III,4). The reading
caused him to reach toward God, even though he had only learned of God seriously
through Monica. It helped him to develop a different outlook on God and take
life more seriously. In this love of wisdom both the love of heart and
enlightenment of mind came together. This love was not dry, but it became a
flaming passion that came alive in him. Cicero renewed this love for Augustine.
Augustine decided that he would love first all of God’s truth and all other
things would find their place and take proportion. When speaking about the
Hortensius, Augustine says, “It altered my outlook on life. It changes my
prayers to you, O Lord, and provided me with new hopes and aspirations. All my
empty dreams suddenly lost their charm and my heart began to throb with a
bewildering passion for the wisdom of eternal truth” (III,4). Wisdom itself
meant that the one true order of the world, is what makes everything stick
together. Augustine later recognized this as God’s truth and word, by which
God had made all things. This wisdom came into the world as Christ.
Augustine’s conversion is clear in outline and was greatly influenced by
different variations of love. From childhood he had loved the name of Christ and
associated with his mother about this and about her love for him. Also, when he
read Cicero it summoned him to embrace the truth and love the wisdom of knowing
the truth. He later experienced renewed love for the church and for Catholic
things from Ambrose. Once God had come to him in compelling love, his surrender
to a new life simply replaced, if it did not completely abolish, the old
tormented division. The death of a very close friend of Augustine’s made him
realize that all love should be rooted in God. All our love starts with God’s
seed, and over time, new branches of love will grow and flourish. Augustine’s
friend became critically ill with a fever. While he laid unconscious, his friend
was baptized a Christian. Eventually, Augustine’s friend passed away and
Augustine felt extreme remorse and grief. Augustine reflected that all human
love is destined to perish unless this love is grounded in the eternal God who
never changes. While love exists for those individual souls who please us, this
love should always have an origin from God. All these themes of love helped and
guided Augustine to his conversion. His conversion was the discovery of a new
self and the discovery of the new world he found through this conversion. The
conversion taught him truth. Augustine discovered the redirection of his
scattered loves first by waking to an overwhelming desire to find the truth,
especially about his personal situation. His desire to know wisdom, which was
activated by Cicero, brought about a new love for Christ, the Word or truth of
God. Full engagement with the love of Christ was still yet to come for
Augustine. His mind was still not at peace or satisfied with any one direction.
Probably the most important and influential form of love that Augustine had was
love for God and love for Christ. Augustine started to realize the important
roles that Christ and God played in his life. A whole new realm was seen by
Augustine and he opened his life up to God more and more each day by talking to
him and letting him now that he loved him very much. Augustine states, “Then,
O Lord, you laid your most gentle, most merciful finger on my heart and set my
thoughts in order, for I began to realize that I believed countless things which
I had never seen or which I had taken place when I was not there to see”
(VI,5). Adhering to God as love’s priority proved a more extended way than he
had imagined. It helped to shape his life, his mind and his beliefs. He never
realized until now what a huge difference it makes in one’s life when it is
opened up to love and love of Christ. The answer lies in God’s grace for
Augustine. These answers are to his utmost difficult questions on life and
faith. The subtle and cunning loves of the heart had defined Augustine’s
journey from the first. At no time in his life had he been without love, but he
had loved in scattered, hidden, and conflicting ways. He had loved Monica. He
had loved the image and name of Christ, he even at one point loved evil which
scared him. Augustine felt the need to redirect his love and this redirection
would lead him in the way and light of God. Augustine seems to be dissatisfied
with himself and his need for God. Through The Confessions he leaves himself and
his past to praising God and loving him. Augustine hopes to teach others about
that love which God placed in him that led him to an eternal relationship with
God. All of Augustine’s loves in turn became love of Christ. Although
Augustine might not have realized this, it is obviously true. At first he was
redirecting his loves directly to Christ, but finally he realized all his love
WAS for Christ. Augustine found a place in God that he had never imagined could
happen. His guilty restless heart finally found rest in God. The Confessions is
the story of a conversion. This conversion took place in the garden; a
conversion that took place from the time he read Cicero at age eighteen; a
conversion that took place across his whole life. The story was not just of
having arrived at a certain point, but of the long way around to get there. Love
played a significant role in this conversion. The old restless heart that
Augustine once had finally found peace and rest in God. It helped guide him
towards God and Christ in a positive way that it influenced the rest of his
life.