Saint Augustine wrote this as his sermon on the Anniversary of his Ordination as a bishop: “Ever since this burden, for which I must render a difficult accounting, has been placed on my shoulders, the concern of my position has disturbed me. What indeed is feared in that office except that what is a danger in regard to our honor may be more pleasing to us than what is fruitful in regard to your salvation.
May I thus be helped by your prayers that the Lord may condescend to carry this burden with me as though it were his own. When you pray, pray likewise for yourselves. For what is this burden of mine about which I am now speaking if not you? Pray for me, indeed, as I pray, that you may not be a heavy burden.
In fact, the Lord Jesus would not call his burden light unless he carried it with the one who bears it. Bear me up, then, so that, according to the Apostle’s precept, we may carry one another’s burdens and thus fulfil the law of Christ (cf. Galatians 6:2). If Christ does not carry this burden with us, we will fall; if he does not carry us, we will fall.
Although I am terrified by what I am for you, I am consoled by what I am with you. For you, I am a bishop; with you, I am a Christian. The former is a title of an office which has been undertaken, the latter is a title of grace. The first is a danger, the second salvation. Furthermore, we are tossed about as though in a great ocean by the tempest of our responsibilities. However, when we recall by whose blood we have been redeemed, it is as though we enter into a safe harbour by the tranquillity of this recollection. Precisely as we struggle in this office we find rest in our common good.
It consoles me more that I have been redeemed with you than that I have been placed over you. I will seek to make my service to you all the more bountiful, as the Lord has commanded, lest I show myself ungrateful for the redemption by which I have merited to become your servant” (Sermon, 340,1).
FAMOUS SENTENCES
Saint Augustine has the gift of putting complex Christian truths in a nutshell and making them incisive and easy to remember. The most famous is the sentence we found in the beginning of the Confessions: “You have created us, Lord, for yourself and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” About God loving us he writes: “Thinking of me, you create me, Lord; loving me you make me lovable.”
Again, touching on the problem of freedom in connection with our salvation, he states, “God who created you without you, will not save you without you.” Writing about the complex relationship between the Old and New Testaments, He gives the beautiful formula: “The New Testament is hidden in the Old, and the Old is revealed in the New.”
We shall conclude with the following passage from the Confessions: “Having then been admonished to turn my attention upon myself, I entered into the most intimate part of my being with you as my guide. I was able to do this because you were my helper. I entered and with the eye of my soul saw everywhere an unchangeable light above that very eye of my soul and above my mind.
ETERNAL TRUTH
It was not this ordinary light visible to all flesh nor was it a light of this same kind but merely stronger, as though it were shining so very much brightly as to be able to penetrate everywhere by its strength. Whoever knows the truth knows this light and whoever knows this light knows eternity. Love knows it.
O eternal truth, true love and lovable eternity! You are my God and I yearn for you day and night. When I first came to know you, you lifted me up so that I might see that something existed which I did not see and that I was not yet such a one as to be able to see it. You, shining brightly within me, beat back the weakness of my vision and I trembled with love and dread.
I found that I was far from you in a region unlike yours, as though I were hearing your voice from on high: I am the food of those who are fully grown. Grow, and you will eat of me. You will not transform me into yourself like bodily food, but you will be transformed into me” (Confessions 7, 10, 6; 7, 18, 24).
