Scope: This lesson examines the Confessions from the emotional angle, looking at its portrait of love and loss and its diagnosis of human grief as a symptom of soul's wandering from God. The key focal points from this angle are the character of Augustine's mother, Monica and the death in Confessions of an unnamed friend.

Objectives:

1. Describe the connection between philosophy and love in Augustine.

2. State Augustine's theory about the nature of friendship.

3. Explain the connection between mortal loves and griefs, according to Augustine.

4. Describe Augustine's relationship with his concubine, distinguishing it both from marriage and promiscuity!

5. Explain the saying: "The son of these tears cannot perish."

6. Summarize Monica's importance in Augustine's life.

7. Describe the emotional "feel" of the soul's wandering far from God, according to Augustine.

I. Seeking and Finding as Themes in Augustine's life!

A. Philosophy, which literally means, "love of wisdom" is for Augustine a form of seeking.

B. For ancient philosophers, all seeking was aimed at finding happiness. What Augustine wants as a Platonist philosopher is to find happiness that can't be lost.

C. For Augustine, life in this world is a journey toward an eternal happiness with God.

II. Confessions 4 on loving what can be lost!

A. Incident: death of Augustine's unnamed friend.

B. They started out as Manichaeans together.

C. Mortally ill, the friend is baptized¹ while unconscious, and this is enough to convert him?

D. God at his mercy snatches Augustine's friend from him, lest he be corrupted again by Manichaeanism.

E. Reflection: Why it hurt so much?

1. Augustine's exquisite description of the world of grief.
2. Augustine's theory is that friendship is a form of love that unties the souls.

Death takes apart this union, and grief is the wound of result.

3. The extraordinary thing about the Confessions is how Augustine's literary art makes this theory palpable to his readers.

C. Conclusion: Loving your friend in God.

1. Augustine tried to find comfort in God but his imaginary Manichaean god could give no comfort. (Augustine is not one of those who think religious illusions are comforting).

2. The solution to the problem of grief is to learn to love what can't be lost! Love God and your friend in God.

D. Appendix: concubine as friend!

(I am not sure I agree with Dr. Carry on this point. Augustine was obsessed with sex and it is so evident that Sigmund Freud based his entire philosophy of psychology on Augustine and Gnostic documents.)

1. The rumors of Augustine's wild youthful sex life are exaggerated. After some adolescent experimentation (how much is hard to tell) he settled down to one woman for a dozen years.

2. She was a concubine which meant something similar to what we call a "common law" wife.

3. He describes his loss of her in the same terms with which he describes the loss of his unnamed friend (6: 15:25).

4. In the end, one of the things she taught him was the importance of rising above sexual desires (6:15.25).

5. Augustine is not obsessed with sex ( once again, I think he was and many, many people agree with me). Intellectually at least, he's much more interested in friendship. He simply recognizes that sex becomes deeply ingrained as a habit that is hard to break, after a dozen years.

III. Monica

A. Monica, the formidable Catholic Mother

1. Monica is one of the strongest female characters in ancient literature and must have been formidable parent.

2. In Augustine's youth, Monica's voice is that of Catholic piety; she warns against fornication and adultery in words that ultimately were not her own words but the Word's of God (2: 3.7).

B. Monica's Dream (2:11.19-20)

1. Monica dreams about her heretic son standing on the Rule of Faith and an angel telling her, "where you are, there he shall be" (3: 11.19).

2. Monica resists her son's attempt to reinterpret her dream in support of his heresy (3: 11.20). (This woman knows her mind and it is Catholic).

C. Monica " on the outskirts of Babylon." (2: 3.8).

1. She has ambitions for her brilliant boy so she discourages him from marrying too young: she thereby deprives him of the most effective remedy against adolescent lust (2: 3.8).

2. She has him wait to be baptized until he has gotten over his adolescent lust (1:11.17) (Once again, this is before infant baptism or the more modern idea of no baptism at all)

3. When he's in his thirties and has climbed the ladder of success for a decade, she arranges an advantageous marriage for him to an underage Christian (Catholic) heiress - an arrangement that gets in the way of Augustine's dedication to the spiritual life (6:6: 13.23).

D. Monica's tears

1. When she weeps over her heretic son, a priest promises her "The son of these tears cannot perish" (3:12.21).

2. She weeps again when Augustine ditches her to leave for Italy (5: 8.14-15).

3. Her tears are an impure mixture of concern for her son's soul and desire for his physical presence ("a mother's love).

4. Her tears are this a sign of God's love predestining Augustine to salvation and a sign that Monica's own love for him needs to be purified.

E. Monica eventually follows her son to Italy

1. Her admiration and deference for Ambrose (6:1.1-2.2)

2. When Augustine is converted and returns to the church, Monica is near by (8: 12.30).

3. In an astonishing instance of shared mysticism, she has with Augustine a vision of divine Wisdom at Ostia (9:10.23-26).

4. The vision at Ostia symbolizes the ultimate unity of philosophy and faith, Reason and Authority - Augustine and Monica.

F. Augustine's tears for Monica

1. She dies far from home but knows the location of her body does not matter (6: 11.27).

2. At her funeral, Augustine tries to restrain his grief but can't - more impure tears (9:12.29-33).

3. The narrative of the Confessions ends with Augustine's hope that we who read it may pray for his parents' souls (9:13.37).

IV. What it feels like to be a soul on its journey

A. To sin is to flee the inescapable (omnipresent) God.

B. Sin means losing what we most love.

C. Augustine the sinner feels grief rather than guilt.

D. Prayer and longing as the best state for the journey of the soul.

Essential Reading

Augustine's Confessions, books 2,4, and 9; also 5:8.14-9:17

Supplementary Reading

Brown, Augustine of Hippo, chapters two and six.

Questions to Consider:

1. Is Augustine correct about how grief feels and what it means?

2. Does Monica remind you of anyone you know?