Homily for Wednesday, 28 August 2019– Memorial of St. Augustine of Hippo

Readings of the day: 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13; Psalm 139:7-8, 9-10, 11-12ab; Matthew 23:27-32

Wednesday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time

This homily was given at St. James Church, Vernon, BC, Canada.

The Psalmist asks God today, “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence”? This question in our Psalm today is, of course, rhetorical; there is no way we may flee from the presence of God and God’s all-knowing spirit. But we should have no need to flee from God, either. God knows we are weakened by the effects of sin. Still, God sent his only Son, Jesus Christ, to redeem and save us, not waiting for us to save ourselves (which is impossible), but encountering us and lifting us from our present state: Good, because after all we are created in God’s image, but corrupted by sin.

There is no point in trying to flee from God, but do we not try to do so from time to time anyway, when we know we have done wrong and are ashamed or afraid of the consequences of our wrongdoing? The saint we celebrate today, Augustine of Hippo, knew something about the futility of trying to flee from God. Before he became one of the most beloved saints and most prolific Christian writers of all time, a bishop and a doctor of the Church (which means that the teaching value of a saint’s writings is especially recognized by our Church), Augustine spent many years trying to flee from God.

In trying to turn himself away from his wild youth, Augustine experimented with philosophical movements that diminished the goodness of the physical human body, understanding it to be the source of the evil, especially sexual evil, within us. But at this point Augustine was still far from God. In his Confessions, Augustine even admits to having prayed during this time in his life, “God, grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.”

So Augustine spent much of his youth running and trying to flee from God. But God, in an especially spectacular way (but not an unprecedented way, since there are many saints like Augustine whom God found and turned from their sin), caught up to Augustine. Again, in his Confessions, Augustine includes the prayer that reflects God’s persistence in bringing him to conversion: “Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient yet ever new… You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you… You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness… I have tasted you; now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.”

As a bishop, Augustine reasoned against the Pelagians, who argued that we could will our own salvation without God’s grace. Augustine taught that the effects of “original” sin, while not negating the goodness of our human nature, created in God’s image and likeness, have made our will, incapable of achieving our salvation without God’s grace. Augustine knew this truth from experience.

There is no point in behaving as hypocrites, in the way the religious leaders of Jesus’ time did and whom Jesus rebukes in our Gospel today. Jesus rebukes the pride and hypocrisy of the Pharisees and scribes, who lorded their social prestige over people they perceived to be inferior; more sinful than they. In fact, this hypocrisy was just another way to try to flee from God.

What Jesus knew and taught because he is God, Augustine had to learn and live by experience: It is futile for us to run from God. God will find us. God will redeem us, and we, like Augustine, will burn for God’s eternal peace.