Providence, the will and presence of God in each moment, is never felt by some people, is felt in moments of joy or consternation by others, is sensed at times in the minutiae of nature, is a product of intense contemplation, a sudden epiphany, is experienced in a dream, is sensed by intuitive awareness, and is seen and/or heard. Aurelius Augustine, who became Bishop of Hippo, and after death a saint and a Doctor of the Church, heard the voice of Providence during one intense moment in his life. What he heard during four seconds changed his life.
Aurelius Augustine (354-430 AD) used his life to pursue universal truth. Following upon John the Apostle, Augustine conceived of knowledge as a universal, transcendent phenomenon that is understood at particular times and in particular places by the individual knower. Augustine knew this relationship between himself, the knower, and Knowledge, God, because of “a voice . . . within me” that “cries out” to “truth itself.” This personal, temporal realization of Knowledge is what John meant by the word (Logos). Augustine’s more complete portrait of the individual’s experience of the word, that is, Providence, is found in his Confessions.
Augustine was raised in North Africa near Carthage by a pagan father and a Christian mother, named Monica. He was an intelligent, precocious boy, a genius at rhetoric, but a sensualist as well. He often got into trouble, at one point engaging in the wanton theft and destruction of an apple orchard. Monica deeply desired him to be a Christian, but her son was not attracted to the stories of the Bible, which he found boring and ludicrous—instead choosing the great humanism of the Greeks and Romans.
Augustine lived in the third century Anno Domini, and it had not been long since Christians were mercilessly hunted and tortured by the Emperor Diocletian. Since Constantine’s conversion in 312, the Church had become more secure. Nevertheless, paganism, the beliefs in the old Roman and Greeks gods, preoccupied the population more than the new religion (which was, however, making inroads). Near Eastern religions such as Mithraism and Manicheism were strong competitors with Christianity for the beliefs and loyalties of Romans. Greco-Roman philosophies, too, attracted the attention of the educated, such as the agnostic Aurelius Augustine.
Augustine was the typical Roman of his time. He was a sensualist, drinking and whoring, and at the same time reading deeply the works of Latin writers such as Cicero, Virgil, and Horace. Cicero in particular attracted Augustine because of his eloquence, mastery of written and spoken Latin, Stoic philosophy, Republican politics, and sophisticated tastes. The extreme diversity of Roman culture, however, confused Augustine, as it did many others, and confusion led to anxiety. So, as he was beginning to teach rhetoric at age twenty-one, he began a search—the search to know what is true.
As Augustine studied and taught rhetoric first in North Africa, then in Milan, he grew to be a famous teacher and became wealthy enough to afford to indulge his senses in a variety of ways. But as he did, he grew increasingly unhappy—and he did not know why. Why didn’t success, fame, wealth, a great mind, a great career, lead to happiness? What was the source of happiness?
While living in Milan, Augustine’s mother Monica came to join him; she was concerned about his anxiety and unhappiness, and she knew that the solution was Christianity. She encouraged Augustine to go to the cathedral to listen to the sermons of Bishop Ambrose. In doing so, Augustine developed a new appreciation for the Bible, especially the writings of St. Paul. He found in Paul’s Epistles a mind like his own, searching for truth even while experiencing anxiety and doubt. But Paul found the truth, the discovery of which eluded Augustine.
He grew more restive as his unhappiness grew, and his attempts to alleviate it by drink, sex, philosophy, and work failed. At a point of crisis, while in the garden of a friend’s house, Augustine suffered a breakdown. He began to cry uncontrollably. He did not know the correct path to take, or how to achieve contentment.
Then he heard a voice: “Take it and read . . . Take it and read.” He stopped, listening. Were there children nearby? No. Whose voice did he hear? Was it the wind, his imagination, or his nerves speaking? No, it was a real, auditory event. But who had spoken to him?
Augustine had been reading Paul’s Epistles, and a copy of the book was nearby. He thought that he was being beckoned to take the book and read from it. So he did.
Not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
The words were directed toward him and his emotional quandary. He knew. A child’s voice had told him to read the solution that he was searching for so vehemently. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ. Who could have spoken to him but the Lord? It was a child’s voice, yes, a voice of innocence, but a voice of command. Do this, and ye shall be saved, the voice said to him, in so many words.
In the span of four seconds one afternoon in the year 386, God intervened in time to speak His will to Aurelius Augustine. Four seconds of the experience of Providence had saved a disturbed and sorrowful man.
It was a new birth.
Shortly thereafter, he was baptized; he joined the Church and put as much energy into his work as he had before in ruminating, doubting, searching, and hungering.
He became a priest and then a bishop, all the while thinking of what happened to him, the four seconds that had changed him. Knowing the miracle that had occurred to an unrepentant sinner, he decided to put his story into words. The result was The Confessions, completed in 398.
What fascinated him most was how Providence could act in just a moment of time . . . to affect the whole of time. In those four seconds, God spoke to his previous thirty-two years of anguish and searching, bringing to an end his despair, and securing his future.
This must be the nature of God, he thought. God is wisdom, intellect, spoken and written truth, creator of all, including time—outside of time yet interacting in time. God sees all simultaneously, knows past, present, future, and intervenes at will. He intervened in his life at a point when Augustine was ready, when he would hear and respond, when he would realize God’s love and choose to return love to God and His creation.
His life of searching had found its aim at last. As he wrote in Confessions, “Surely happiness is what everyone wants, so much so that there can be none who do not want it.” Augustine believed that all people know what happiness is because they at one point or another have experienced it. At each moment, one yearns for happiness because one has a memory of its experience. What, then, is this experience of happiness? Augustine argued that this is the experience of God, however fleeting:
True happiness is to rejoice in the truth, for to rejoice in the truth is to rejoice in you, O God.
But how can humans, ignorant because they live in time, know what is timeless, what is truth? One’s mind must “be seized and held steady,” Augustine wrote, “for that short moment” so to “glimpse the splendour of eternity which is for ever still.” Time for us might never be still, but God alone . . . is still.
Editor’s Note: This is part 3 in a series on understanding Divine Providence as revealed to us by God and interpreted by man throughout history. Tune in for part 4 on Monday, July 28th!
Quotes from Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (Penguin Books, 1961) and Wippel and Wolter, Medieval Philosophy (New York: Free Press, 1969).
Image from Wikimedia Commons
