St. Augustine dedicated a great human and intellectual effort to find the truth and found it when he understood that God is the supreme truth for man, said Fr. Pasquale Cormio, prior of the Agustina community of Rome.
In a column Published in the Agency SERalso the rector of the Basilica of San Agustín de Campo Marzio recalled that the Holy Bishop of Hippo sought the truth, “which is the search for happiness and beauty, the precious good that is desired and possessed permanently.”
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Before his conversion – by which his mother, Santa Monica – the young Agustín had fallen into a life of sin and embraced Manichaeism and then academic skepticism. However, his approach to San Ambrosio, then Archbishop of Milan, ended up taking him to Catholicism.
“Even touring the paths of error and sin, he never stopped feeling the desire and passion for the truth inside. And he only found peace when he understood that God is the supreme truth for man: ‘You are great, Lord, and worthy of great praise … you made us for you, and our heart is restless until I rest in you,’ ‘said Fr. Confessions.
The Agustino prior recalls that “nothing can satisfy the thirst of man except God”, therefore, when Agustín “discovers in itself the presence of God, also finds the compass to guide his life.”
Agustín found satiety, peace and happiness “When his love discovered God and could hug him, feel him and taste him to the point of regretting every last minute without God: ‘I loved you, so old and new beauty, I loved you late.'”
“You cannot reach God without knowing the humility of Jesus Christ,” added the priest. “The Bishop of Hipona,” he explained, “revealed that she sucked the name of Jesus Salvador directly from her mother Monica and that she kept it as a memory that cling even when she abandoned the Catholic faith and the Church.”
After experiencing a wide variety of experiences – the illusions of pride and vanity, the pleasures of the flesh, the religious and philosophical discussions of his time, the internal conflicts of a heart in constant search -, Agustín will only recognize in Christ “greater stability” (VIII, 1.1). And in the Garden of Milan, in the year 386, he will culminate his long way of conversion, when he embraces without reservations to the humble Christ as a model of life and wishes to fully identify with him.
Fr. Cormio concluded highlighting that after a life of vanities and pleasures, St. Augustine will recognize that only in Christ there is “greater stability” and, in Milan, “in the year 386 he will complete his long way of conversion, when he welcomes without reservations to Christ humble as a model of life and wants to identify fully with him.”
Eduardo Berdejo
Professional in Social Communication of the National University of San Marcos in Peru, I have more than 20 years of experience in Catholic digital journalism. As part of ACI Press, I have been sent to cover the trips of Pope Francis to Cuba, Mexico, Colombia and Peru, in addition to the Synod of Sinodality in the Vatican in 2023.