Catholic Thought discussion

Augustine, moved by his conversion, resigns his position, for his obligations there did not conform with Christian values. He and his friends along with his mother and his son Adeodatus, move for a time to an estate outside the city of Milan to prepare for baptism. Now, on the other side of conversion, he discovers aspects of the faith that he previously missed. They were there in plain sight, he simply wasn’t receptive to them.

“(11) I read on and on, all afire, but I could find no way to help those deaf, dead folk among whom I had once been numbered. I had been a lethal nuisance, bitter and blind and baying against honey-sweet scriptures distilled from heaven’s honey, scriptures luminous by your light; but now to think of the enemies of that scripture caused me anguish.”

After returning to the city the men were baptized.

”(14) And so we were baptized, and all our dread about our earlier lives dropped away from us. During the days that followed I could not get enough of the wonderful sweetness that filled me as I meditated upon your deep design for the salvation of the human race. How copiously I wept at your hymns and canticles, how intensely I was moved by the lovely harmonies of your singing Church! Those voices flooded my ears, and the truth was distilled into my heart until it overflowed in loving devotion; my tears ran down, and I was better for them.”

We also get a glimpse into Monica’s life. Augustine tells of his late father’s continual infidelities and how she bore them with the strength and wisdom of her faith, hoping in his eventual conversion, which did come before his death. She was also a role model for other women who were amazed that they never heard of any strife in her household. “(19) Those who followed it found out its worth and were happy; those who did not continued to be bullied and battered.”Given that women were subordinate to men, she must have had an uncanny ability to handle potentially volatile situations and pass this wisdom on to other women in similar situations.

Augustine and his group travel to the port city of Ostia to move back to Africa. Here he has an extraordinary mystical experience together with his mother. Words really fail here. Maybe we can go through these lines together in the discussion.

Soon after Monica falls ill and dies. In his grief he records this beautiful poem.

Creator God, O Lord of all,
Who rule the skies, you clothe the day
In radiant color, bid the night
In quietness serve the gracious sway
Of sleep, that weary limbs, restored
To labor’s use, may rise again,
And jaded minds abate their fret,
And mourners find release from pain.

Chapter 9 of Book Nine has some passages about St. Augustine’s mother that sound odd to my sensibility. He writes first that his mother “was given to a husband whom she served as her lord.” Then “she endured with patience his infidelity and never had any dissension with her husband on this account.” Furthermore “he was also violent in anger; but she had learned that an angry husband should not be resisted, either in deed or in word.” She reminds other wives who “bore marks of blows on their disfigured faces . . . that from the hour they heard what are called the matrimonial tablets read to them, they should think of them as instruments by which they were made servants.” Apparently Patricius did not beat St. Monica. When St. Monica’s mother-in-law gets involved hearing rumors that the servants are spreading on Patricius and “in the interest of family discipline to insure the future harmony of its members, he had those servants beaten who were pointed out by her who had discovered them.” (Coulter translation)

What I feel uneasy about is the relationship between the husband and wife as well as the beating of servants. Justice is a universal value, society standards of the time notwithstanding. These behaviors cry out for attention never mind the centuries.

These are difficult passages to read, no question. In a recent homily our priest commented that the Judeo-Christian value of justice was there from the beginning, but it took a long time to percolate to the top. The cultural realities, what is the norm, how you treat your wife or your slaves, is a world we are so far removed from, and it took many centuries to overcome them.
What I think is hard for us today is to put ourselves into the mindset of a rigid stratified society that knows nothing else. Does a person fight the injustices that befall one with the same rigor as we do today? Or are you more like St. Monica, trying to outsmart your master, especially your husband? I could imagine that those who were perpetual victims to having a remarkable stoicism to endure injustices and the coping mechanisms that come with it. They knew their realities and the hopelessness of their situations, and they developed the smarts to navigate it as best as they could.
This, of course, doesn't excuse any of it.

This is where I think Christianity was such a break-through. It offered hope to the hopeless. If not in this life, then in the next.

There were a couple of incidences of what today would be of considered questionable morality, and I think Augustine senses it too. For instance, sending away his concubine who was essentially his wife in all but name and the mother of his child strikes me as immoral. I haven't finished Book IX yet so I don't want to put out more details but don't we see his son lament her departure? We never learn if his concubine was open to conversion and therefore a legit marriage but somehow I get the impression Monica would have been against Augustine staying with her anyway under any condition. So even Monica fails in some sense to a more universal morality. I completely agree with Galicius above.

But I think that is part of the confessions. Augustine is I think confessing for all the wrongs at the end of Book IX.

I have been so darn busy I haven't been able to comment as much as I want. But here's something I'm copying over from my blog.

Today is Thanksgiving Day, which is such a uniquely American holiday. Today is a day to be thankful for all of God’s gifts to: your family, your friends, your home, the abundance of food, and perhaps all the material things we have available and at our fingertips. The source of all is our Creator, and we should be grateful and thankful.

I was reading this passage last night in St. Augustine’s Confessions from Book Nine. Augustine’s mother Monica, who prayed for his soul no matter what throughout Augustine’s pagan and dissolute years, has recently seen his conversion. Shortly after this joy in her life, Monica catches a fever and within nine days dies. Augustine offers this prayer of thanks and for her soul, which I found very touching and apt for today’s feast.

Book Nine, Chapter 13, Paragraph 35:

So it is, Praise and my Life, God of my heart, that I set aside for a little her good actions, for which I give thanks to you with rejoicing, and pray to you for my mother’s sins. Hear my prayers, through the Healing of our wounds, who hung on a tree, who sitting at the right hand of the Father, intercedes for us. I know that she dealt mercifully, and forgave her debtors from her heart; forgive her what debts she gave up in all those years after she was washed in the saving waters. Forgive, Lord, forgive, I pray. Enter not into judgement with her. Let mercy triumph over judgement, for your sayings are true, and you have promised mercy to the merciful. That they are merciful is your gift also; you who have mercy to those to whom you will have mercy, and are merciful to those to whom you will grant mercy.
-Phillip Burton translation, Everyman Library.

Augustine is thankful for all his mother did for him, and goes on to pray for God to have mercy on her. And in that last sentence we see that Augustine sees God having mercy as a gift too.

So today, among your many blessings, be additionally thankful for your mother and for God’s mercy.

Beautiful!

Have readers noticed how many people in The Confessions die from fever. There was the unnamed friend in Book IV, his friends Veracundus and Nibridius, his mother Monica, and while we are never told how they die, they do die suddenly, his son and his father. Could they too have had a fever? Even Augustine himself in the beginning of Book Nine has a problem with his breathing and lungs.

What's going on?

People are always drawing analogies with the collapse of the Roman Empire. They cite lack of patriotism, excessive taxation, widespread immorality, and Edward Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire cites the Empire's conversion to Christianity as the reason.

Let me be controversial again and say all those reasons are hogwash. The best answer I have ever heard on why the Roman Empire collapsed was a from population drop due to widespread plague that effected Europe in the fourth and fifth centuries. The virus, or perhaps viruses, came into Europe from central Asia where a large number of people began migrating. The Huns were one particular and well known group. With the migration came viruses of which the Roman population had not built up immunity. It was sort of how the population of the people in the Americas dropped when Europeans started to come over during the age of exploration. And so by the fifth century the population drop was so excessive that the Romans just did not have enough manpower to defend the Empire.

The moral of the story here then is to get your flu shot. ;)

Manny wrote: "People are always drawing analogies with the collapse of the Roman Empire...."

There is a theory that the madness of the emperors and other Romans came from using drinking cups and plumbing with large amount of the chemical element lead in them.

Galicius wrote: "Manny wrote: "People are always drawing analogies with the collapse of the Roman Empire...."

My brother in law who is a scientist at NYU gave a lecture once about the madness of the emperors and o..."

Yeah I’ve heard that too. It doesn’t explain the good emperors or the rest of the population.

In one of Peter R.L. Brown's books he mentions a stunning statistic of late antiquity: Each woman had to give birth to five children for the population to stay at the status quo. This tells us not only of the high infant mortality rate, but also the high mortality rate of women giving birth. It is far more severe than we see in developing countries today. So any calamity would have sent the population numbers teetering, and if severe enough, plunging. To recover from these would have taken generations.

Yes I can believe those numbers. The population drop was incredible. That is why the Romans in the western half kept allowing in the Germanic tribes. I believe the western half suffered mire so. It was a hope that they become Romanized and add to the population. Unfortunately it had mixed results.

That author looks interesting. If I had more time I would explore his books. I’ve mentioned I’m a ancient Roman history buff. Late antiquity is actually more fascinating than the Republic or early empire.

I loved Book Nine. My mother is 84 and if and when I may be called to do a eulogy, Book Nine is filled with great quotes to frame it. For instance, from paragraph 22, the last sentence:

"She tended us as if she were the mother of all, and served us as if she were the daughter of all." (Burton translation)

That does describe my mother!

Manny wrote: "I loved Book Nine. My mother is 84 and if and when I may be called to do a eulogy, Book Nine is filled with great quotes to frame it. For instance, from paragraph 22, the last sentence:

"She tende..."

She reminds me of my mother also. My mother is in her 70's now and she still takes care of the family, making sure we have what we need and doing for others first. She is someone I strive to be like.

Each of the books so far has given me much food for thought. In book nine it's been the domestic abuse aspect. I have a hard time understanding how she managed it and I am so very grateful to live in a country where women have rights and resources are available to them. As I was reading I had a visual of her talking to women about how she keeps from being abused and seeing the scorn on some women's faces as they believed she simply couldn't understand and others finding hope that if she lived with a man known for his temper and isn't hurt then they might be able to learn from her. Her patience was so great that her example led him and her sons to Christ. There is strength there.

I found the second half of Book Nine—the death of Monica—oddly constructed. The first half of the chapter we see the conversion to Christianity of several his friends, we see Augustine quitting his job, we see him settling into the country with his son and mother, and finally getting baptized into the faith with his friend Alypius and his son Adeodatus. You would think that would be the climax of the chapter, if not the book itself, but it’s not.

He goes on to describe his return to Africa and along the way at Ostia Monica dies. Then he spends several chapters going through a retrospective on his mother’s life, sort of like a eulogy. He talks about her youth, her patience and virtues, especially as her Christian faith was tested with her husband and her mother-in-law.

You would think he would end the discourse there, but he brings the time line right back to Book Nine’s present with Augustine and his mother in a room in Ostia before her illness discussing the nature of heaven and how Monica’s life was fulfilled with her son’s baptism. And then he narrates her illness and death. It’s almost as if she dies a second time. We then see her funeral and the lamentations from both Augustine and his son, and Augustine asks God to forgive her sins. He finally ends the chapter by bringing his father back with a concluding image of united husband and wife, united in eternity.

So why does Augustine share a chapter between two major events of his story, his baptism, which you would think is the climax of the story, and the death of his mother, which you would think is dénouement, or in musical terms, a coda? Why does Augustine go through two loops of his mother’s death, when doing so would seemingly break the narrative flow? Augustine is a master rhetorician—one of the greatest in history—so there is definitely a purpose here.

Here are my thoughts. The climax of his life and story is not the baptism, which is limited to a relatively short paragraph, but the mother’s death. By ending the chapter with Monica’s passing, it completely dominates the chapter and overshadows the baptism, and by witnessing her death twice Augustine is driving the nail home with his point. The climactic moment I think is in the middle of paragraph 29. Augustine has just pressed her dead eyes shut and relates the aftereffect: “Then too, as she breathed her last, the child Adeodatus burst out in lamentation; then, restrained by all the rest of us, fell silent. In this way something childish in me also—the something that was slipping into tears—was checked by the voice of that young heart, and fell silent.”

The quieting of Adeodatus’ childish heart is also the quieting of Augustine’s childish heart, and has now by being retrained become mature. The death of a parent is one of those milestones that propel us into maturity. Here I think it becomes the climax of Augustine’s life.

Talea wrote: "Each of the books so far has given me much food for thought. In book nine it's been the domestic abuse aspect. I have a hard time understanding how she managed it and I am so very grateful to live ..."

Unfortunately today too many women are still abused, both physically and sexually. Just look at what's going on in the news these days. At least there are resources, but it's unfortunately impossible to eradicate. Hopefully we've gotten better.

Talea wrote: "Manny wrote: "I loved Book Nine. My mother is 84 and if and when I may be called to do a eulogy, Book Nine is filled with great quotes to frame it. For instance, from paragraph 22, the last sentenc..."

For many years now, Telea, I've said that mothers are the backbone of civilization. Without self sacrificing mothers, things just fall apart.

Manny wrote: "I've said that mothers are the backbone of civilization."

The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.