When I was fifteen I decided to read a book about God. Which book, I did not know; all I knew was that a lot of intriguing people around me were reading them, so I wanted to give it a try too. (Peer pressure could have put me much worse off, right?) When I went to the local used book store, the only title I recognized on the “Religion” shelf was Confessions by St. Augustine. Why I recognized it, I have no idea. Augustine was not a part of my cradle-Catholic upbringing. I gather that pop culture had familiarized me with the title more than from Sunday school class.
Nevertheless, this inexplicable, faint familiarity was enough to spur on the purchase, and over the next month or so I found myself rushing home after school to parse through the dense pages of Confessions on the grass of my front lawn. I read it at the neighborhood park, in bed before I feel asleep at night, and under my umbrella during rainy afternoon walks.
This was the first time I fell in love with theology, and surely one of the pivotal moments in my continuous falling in love with God. It was not until recently, however, that I realized that reading of Confessions marked another first-time romance: it was the first time I fell in love with St. Augustine.
I didn’t literally fall in love with this fourth century, North African saint. But I really did fall in love with some of the man’s characteristics that surfaced in the autobiography: that restless longing for God; his noble, idealistic self-aspirations; the brutally honest disenchantment; his radical hope in God’s faithfulness. Augustine’s traits absolutely captivated me–that’s why I read so eagerly. And as of late, I have realized that these are the very same attributes manifested in the people I fall in love with. When I consider the various men I have fallen for hard in my young life, they exemplify, in some way or another, the restless characteristics I fell in love with as a 15 year old with her head stuck in a book. I am 23, and still falling in love with Augustine over and over again.
What’s up with that? Why am I captivated by men like this? And really, considering the larger spectrum of relationships in my life, why am I attracted to all sorts of friends and acquaintances who possess these Augustinian qualities? Perhaps it’s because I tend to be a bit of a restless, idealistic, God-seeker too. I am yearning to connect with people who live out this restlessness-thing better than I do. I long for companions who can help me along. And they do help. The Augustine’s I fall in love with again and again–the lovers and the friends–they do help me feel a little less strange and a bit more hopeful in this world.
I know we are all looking for the empathy of companions in this life. This is a very human thing. I guess I just didn’t expect I’d find love in a saint, and I didn’t expect to find that saint in the people I love.
Compared to you, I grew up with Augustine. There was an Augustinian Recollect monastery in the twon where I grew up (Suffern, N.Y.). The friars did have an effect on our parish priests as well. I’m shocked to see a woman who likes Augustine. Older women usually can’t stand him (patriarchy, anti-lust/sex, yadda, yadda). I’ve read the Confessions 4 x. One of my readings was done on the trains of NJ transit and the NYC subway. I am not as pro-Augustine as you are as I find his story to not be as applicable to our times or my life. However, he is awfully quotable and at times extremely reasonable. I read him in English of course, and think that some of those sentences must be awesome in Latin. I’d read anything that you might have written about the Confessions.