Good morning, digital neighbors. Happy Friday to all you fine souls scattered across the Rubin Report, Phetasy, Outspoken, and At Padre’s. Today we celebrate the memorial of St. Augustine of Hippo. Yesterday was his mother, St. Monica. These are some of my favorite people to remember and honor. I draw inspiration from their lives, I ask for their prayers just as I would yours, and I contemplate how they point me to God and to embracing His will. Buckle up, it is another TL;DR ramble!
Monica is the model of untiring prayer as she prayed for the conversion of her husband, Patricius, and her son Augustine. She is a model of praying for the right thing: other people and their faith. She prayed that they might be open to God’s grace, that they might respond to the humble and subtle promptings of the Holy Spirit. While we can certainly pray for our needs, and are encouraged to do so trustingly with our Heavenly Father, too often we treat such prayer as wish fulfillment designed to accord with our own will. They are good wishes after all, aren’t they?
Prayer is never meant to change God; it is meant to change us in a variety of ways. I think until that truly dawns upon the mind and heart of an individual, prayer has more in common with magic and less in common with a covenantal relationship. Prayer opens us up to the immensity of God’s goodness. Prayer calls us out of darkness into the light, from among the walking dead to being truly alive in God. We begin to see ourselves more clearly for the first time (which is often a rude awakening) and to see the unmerited mercy of God. Prayer can change us, and the people we love. Monica’s constant prayer was that the unbelievers in her family would come to know God. We celebrate her prayers being answered. The cynic will point to countless ones who never have their prayers answered, but there is no pleasing someone soured on life like a diehard cynic. Just pray for them, witness to them, and insulate yourself from them. Be critical, yes. Be cynical, no.
When most people think of St. Augustine, they think only of his sexually train-wrecked life. I suppose that is because we live in an age that has so heavily promoted wrecking your life in human sexuality that we feel less ashamed and more comfortable with those who have done likewise. For most of my childhood the sexually chaste were thought to be either ugly or stuck-up prudes who couldn’t get with the groove. If you were a virgin before marriage, there was something wrong with you. The sexual revolution and its licentiousness are a bust. Lives contaminated by porn addiction and dating-app pimping are not leading to happier or more fulfilling lives. “Maybe I will get laid by Prince Charming or the Queen of Nymphos” is farcical thinking. St. Augustine certainly had his issues. “Make me chaste, but not yet” is often quoted by those who only focus on the sexual wreckage of his life.
The less examined part of his life is how brilliant Augustine was. He was one of the smartest minds of his age, and it came with all the pride and conceit of any of us who are above average. Once you know you are smarter than others, it is hard not to slip into the self-congratulatory throes of pride and conceit. He was a master of rhetoric and immensely well studied in the classics. Dismantling others in debate was high entertainment when you weren’t watching chariot races and battles in an arena. Most of the games had ended by Augustine’s later years.
Augustine’s grounding was in Manichaeism, and it answered the problem of evil: a Good God and a Bad God locked in a cosmic struggle. Jews and Christians would say that is false—downright heretical, don’t ya know? I am hesitant to use the word heretic, even if it is an appropriate term; it comes with too much baggage. The history of dealing with heresy in humanity (not just the Church) is one of irrationality, punishment, and violence. Just ask the non-maskers and non-vaxxers of 2020–2021. Humanity loves too much herd-feel and groupthink. Back to Augustine.
His big moment of coming into the light was meeting Ambrose, a match for his intellect and wit. Ambrose’s preaching worked that wonderful balance of attraction to the truth and unsettling one’s current situation. As children we have no control over change, but as adults most of us only change when we are uncomfortable with the current situation. We must be either in immense discomfort or see the advantage of change as so unmistakably good that we dare to punch the button. The combination of a mother’s prayers, the friendship of Ambrose, and the right moment of a child’s voice saying “take up and read” (Romans 13:13) did the rest.
Well, if you stuck with me this long, I leave you with the most famous words of St. Augustine for anyone seeking the Lord:
Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
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XIII
The Proud Minister
One day there came into the Garden a man in torn clothes badly bruised and cut, who said to the Lover, “In the name of the Beloved I demand your help.”
So the Lover and the Disciple let him in and dressed his wounds and prepared the best of the vegetables from the Garden for him to eat. When his wounds had been dressed and he had eaten and rested the Lover asked him how he had fallen into this plight, to which the man replied, “I was Minister of the Beloved in a city near this place, where I preached His gospel and expounded His doctrine to the people. I pointed out to them how their sins had made them wholly hateful to the Beloved and how therefore they were utterly beyond the range of His love and He would condemn them to eternal torments, whereon some fell into despair and wept bitterly but many were angry. One day the magistrates called me before them and begged me to leave the city and preach elsewhere for they said I had made many people so angry and desperate that they feared there might be a riot and they might not be able to protect me but that I might suffer some injury. I, however, very zealous for the Beloved and believing that the magistrates only feared that their own sins might be proclaimed, preached the more vehemently, denounced the magistrates and made it abundantly clear that the whole wicked city was foredoomed to eternal punishment by the just provision of the Beloved. Whereon a mob, stirred up no doubt by the corrupt and venal magistrates, fell upon me with sticks and stones, nearly killing me and driving me out of the city in the state in which I came to you.”
“My friend,” said the Lover, “this was not a good deed of yours, for besides denying the unfathomable compassion of the Beloved, you have by your obstinacy caused these people to commit a grievous sin, and this cannot be pleasing to the Beloved, that through you who profess to be His minister the people should become worse. Surely you remember that He Himself said, ‘If they persecute you in one city flee to another.’”
Therefore the man was very angry, and cursing the Lover, said, “I see that I have had a very false report of you and I do not believe that you are a servant of the Beloved at all. When I came to you so injured for the Beloved’s sake you set before me only herbs and fruits although the garden is full of birds which you could have killed to make me a worthy meal. I shall proclaim everywhere that you are no true servant of the Beloved but a mere falterer who dares not suffer in the cause of the Beloved. Be sure that you are foreordained to eternal torments who suffer nothing here.”
For the man was so blinded by his own pride that he could not perceive the scars on the hands and feet and the brows of the Lover nor how the cloth beneath the armpits of his tunic was dyed with a red dye. So he went out of the Garden cursing and shouting.
But the Lover looked sad and said, “A man like this does much harm to the cause of the Beloved, for by thus speaking falsely about the Beloved he may bring men to fear Him but none to love Him, and by love alone can any man approach the Beloved.”
