St. Augustine's Character as Illustrated Within His Confessions
The character of St. Augustine (354-430) as seen within his Confessions (begun 397), which he wrote as a long epistle to God, in midlife, marks a distinct turning point in the life, attitudes, and values of Augustine the man. The content of Augustine's Confessions itself points to personality traits of Augustine's including honesty, sincerity, humility, piety, a capacity for self-reflection, and a desire for self-improvement. Augustine spent his youth licentiously, and up to the point of his midlife, remained far more interested in hedonistic pursuits than in being of service to God. All of that changed for him midlife, however, precipitated by a sort of "midlife crisis" (as we would call it nowadays). At that point in his life, when he was about 43, Augustine realized that none of the activities from which he derived temporary pleasure were genuinely fulfilling, and that genuine fulfillment came to him only from service to God. Augustine was also strongly affected, in a spiritual sense, by his mother's death at around this time. Augustine's mother had been a devout Christian, far more so than Augustine's father, and she had always hoped that her son would follow her own spiritual path. However, St. Augustine's own Christian beliefs were not especially strong until after his mother's death. It was then that Augustine himself converted to Christianity, taking the core value of his beloved mother into himself. In this essay, I will discuss how Augustine's character is reflected within the words of his Confessions.
Augustine's Confessions is, first and foremost, a work of self-revelation. As...
Confessions in fact forms the cornerstone of the Catholic belief that, whatever one's stage in life or past sins, it is never to late to repent, and to seek forgiveness and redemption. This cornerstone belief of Augustine's likely indicates that he was, himself, a forgiving individual, since one must first possess the capability to forgive oneself, in order to forgive others.
The text of Augustine's Confessions also indicates that Augustine believed in the importance of the individual, the individual soul, and the individual's relationship to God. According to Lawall et al.:
Augustine, [was] . . . responsible for the consolidation of the Church in the West, especially for the systemization of its
doctrine and policy. . .
. . . he set down, for the benefit of others, the story of his early life and his conversion to Christianity . . . which proclaims the value of the individual soul and the importance of its relation to God. . . . Augustine talks directly to God, in humility, yet conscious that God is concerned for him personally.
(p. 1221)
Augustine's humility toward God is shown by his willingness to give God credit for everything that has happened to him in life, good, bad, or neutral. Augustine gives God credit for his
education, his experiences (even the ones he now regrets, so that he might come to know better), and indeed, for his very existence on
earth. Furthermore, none of this is
random, Augustine observes within his epistle, but instead part of God's plan for him. In Book I of his Confessions, for example [Childhood], Augustine states:
. . . For my sustenance and my delight I had woman's milk; yet it…
