Augustine & Benedict:
Battling the heresies of today
by Giuliano Vigini
Translated from
January 12, 2009
This essay anticipates the release this month by the Vatican publishing house LEV of Sant'Agostino spiegato dal Papa which puits together the various homilies and catecheses that Benedict XVI has given on the saint that has most influenced his work as theologian.
Benedict XVI's frequent references to St. Augustine tells the story of a long friendship that started in Joseph Ratzinger's youth.
Cultivating and deepening his knowledge of Augustine's work, Joseph Ratzinger entered into full harmony with it, grasped its 'newness' and revelled in the enjoyment of a kindred spirit.
Augustine became the subject of his doctoral dissertation at the University of Munich in the academic year 1950-1951. This led young Prof. Fr. Ratzinger to inquire further and to understand in a fresh manner the sacramental nature of the Church, through the Christological and ecclesiological thinking elaborated by Augustine, in whose vision and action, nothing is separated, everything tends to interact and compose together a fruitful harmony.
In fact it is obvious that the doctrine of Augustine left a deep mark on the young Ratzinger.
In the courses, seminars and lectures that he gave in the theological faculties of four German universities - Bonn, Muenster, Tuebingen and Regensburg - from the late 1950s to 1977 when he was named Archbishop of Munich-Freising, Augustine was his constant point of reference - one of the inspirational bases for his theology as well as a spiritual lighthouse of his Magisterium.
For Benedict XVI, the turbulent course of Augustine's life and his eventual anchoring in the faith was characterized above all by a 'passion for the truth', as he recalled during the solemn Eucharistic concelebration in the Orti Borromaici (Borromeo Gardens) of Pavia when he came to pay homage to the remains of Augustine (April 22, 2007).
This was not truth understood as an abstract philosophical principle, but as a tangible reality - not a remote mirage, but an incarnated truth. In which it is faith that throws wide open the horizons for such truth, leading to that essential link between 'intelligere' (to understand) and 'credere' (to believe) in the context of reason and the authority of faith, faith as thought and faith as lived.
But first of all, there was the humility with which Augustine set out to open the doors to the mystery of God - the humility to which every Christian is called: "The humility of God's incarnation should match the humility of our faith," Augustine wrote, "which lays down all-knowing arrogance and bows down when it enters to become part of the community of the Body of Christ".
After his journey to conversion and coming home to the faith, Augustine proved his humility, the Pope underscored, in the sacrifice of his own dreams (above all, once he had become a priest, to devote himself to the contemplative life), to become a living Gospel among men. In the crossroads of life - when one chooses to go one way but God asks us to go the other - such humility is required.
Augustine had the humility, placing himself totally in the service of others: "Ever anew, to be there for everyone, not for one's own perfection; ever anew, to be with Christ, to give one's life so that others may find him, who is true Life".
Augustine's humble faith was shown even in his endless desire for God's mercy. His was not the attitude of someone who has received the gift of grace once and for all, but on the contrary, of someone who all his life considered himself to be 'a mendicant of God' (mendicus Dei) and therefore continued to seek him to obtain his pardon and help.
This aspect of Augustine also highlights the urge for 'permanent conversion' together with 'the grace of perseverance' which we must pray for daily to the Lord.
Finally, the passion for truth, which in Augustine finds its outlet in his faith in Christ and in the Church, is also expressed as a great passion for man. Faith does not close one's doors, it does not isolate, it does not abandon reason and freedom, it does not exclude anything.
Rather, faith opens up, expands, orients and leads, because faith in 'God Love' (1 Jn 4,8.16) is that which manifests itself as an expansion of love, and the Church is most herself to the degree that it is a community of love.
Benedict XVI's first encyclical,
Deus caritas est - which he symbolically gave to the world in front of Augustine's tomb - and which "owes very much to him" - is, in fact, a mirror of the commandment of charity, lived as service to truth and Christ's love.
In presenting Augustine, Benedict XVI arrives at the heart of his teaching, from which he has drawn the thoughts, words and examples that constitute the guidelines for his own Magisterium. Augustine is a mirror that reflects part of him.
In reviewing his theological, spiritual meditative and cultural works, one can truly grasp the Augustinian line that inspires and holds together his reflections.
There appear two be two cardinal concepts along which Benedict XVI develops his thought: truth and unity.
Truth understood as a 'symphony' according to an ancient concept revived and made famous by Hans Urs von Balthasar.
Unity understood as communion in the truth, where differences do not splinter into ruinous particularisms, but act as a bond in a reciprocity of love that always looks at the greater good, the truth - full, total and harmonious.
Absent these premises, the approach to truth becomes a 'mono-phony' rather than a 'sym-phony' - a solo rather than polyphony.
It is what Johann Moehler - one of the theologians most appreciated by Benedict XVI (along with Newman, Rosmini, Guardini, De Lubac, Congar, Von Balthasar...) - expressed in a similar way, speaking of the sense of superior beauty one gets from the sound of a polyphonic choir: not so much because they are singing impeccably, but because the training of the singers and the wisdom of their conductor are such as to blend together different voices and tonalities into one harmony.
Such is the work of Benedict XVI, who recalls in many ways the various aspects of Augustine's preaching and pastoral action.
Already in his celebrated
Rapporto sulla Fede [his interview-book with Vittorio Messori), the author faced a series of theological adn moral issues - from the concept of Church to the tragedy of morals; from liturgy to separated brothers; from the theology of liberation to feminism - making his points firmly and seeking to dissipate the numerous equivocations that have surrounded these issues.
Today, some of those questions have come back; some have changed form; and some have been added on, feeding old and new debates.
Indicating the sources of the faith and an authentic interpretation of texts, Benedict XVI always has the bar firmly centered, in which faithfulness to principles, to Tradition, to a clear and solid Christian identity, does not preclude the possibility of seeing and applying - in an intelligent and balanced way - whatever will serve to be able to live the faith ever more consciously, for the Church and for men.
If, in the time of Augustine, controversies were doctrinal in nature and his contemporaries saw the strenuous efforts of the Bishop of Hippo to combat so many heresies and deviations (Manichaean, Donatist, Pelagian, etc), today the great problems are of an ecclesial and pastoral nature, considered above all within the context of that vast subject of 'the new evangelization', in a world that is getting more secularized, within the Church as well as outside it.
All of Benedict XVI's commitment, in fulfillment of his own mandate to protect and confirm his brothers in the faith, is to remind the world of the need for a strong rootedness in Christ and the perennial values of Christianity.
These are the only true prerequisites for being Christians who are mature in living their faith and credible in bringing it to others.
That is why Benedict XVI does not tire - in the name of Augustine, who is one of the founding fathers of Western culture - to rally the faithful around the Christian foundations of Europe, which serve as the mortar holding together the idea of man himself as a sacred being because he is a creature of God and inviolable in his human and personal dignity.
Without such roots, not only will the Christian identity be lost which has spiritually and culturally shaped Europe, but the profound truth about man and his destiny will likewise be stripped away instead of being at the common heart of Europe itself today.