While he lay
unconscious, his friend was baptized a Christian. Eventually, Augustine’s friend
passed away and Augustine felt extreme remorse and grief. Augustine reflected
that all human love is destined to perish unless this love is grounded in the
eternal God who never changes. While love exists for those individual souls who
please us, this love should always have an origin from God. All these themes of
love helped and guided Augustine to his conversion. His conversion was the
discovery of a new self and the discovery of the new world he found through this
conversion. The conversion taught him truth. Augustine discovered the
redirection of his scattered loves first by waking to an overwhelming desire to
find the truth, especially about his personal situation. His desire to know
wisdom, which was activated by Cicero, brought about a new love for Christ, the
Word or truth of God. Full engagement with the love of Christ was still yet to
come for Augustine. His mind was still not at peace or satisfied with any one
direction. Probably the most important and influential form of love that
Augustine had was love for God and love for Christ. Augustine started to realize
the important roles that Christ and God played in his life. Augustine saw a
whole new realm and he opened his life up to God more and more each day by
talking to him and letting him now that he loved him very much. Augustine
states, “Then, O Lord, you laid your most gentle, most merciful finger on my
heart and set my thoughts in order, for I began to realize that I believed
countless things which I had never seen or which I had taken place when I was
not there to see” (VI, 5). Adhering to God as love’s priority proved a more
extended way than he had imagined. It helped to shape his life, his mind and his
beliefs. He never realized until now what a huge difference it makes in one’s
life when it is opened up to love and love of Christ. The answer lies in God’s
grace for Augustine. These answers are to his utmost difficult questions on life
and faith. The subtle and cunning loves of the heart had defined Augustine’s
journey from the first. At no time in his life had he been without love, but he
had loved in scattered, hidden, and conflicting ways.
He had loved Monica. He
had loved the image and name of Christ, he even at one point loved evil, which
scared him. Augustine felt the need to redirect his love and this redirection
would lead him in the way and light of God. Augustine seems to be dissatisfied
with himself and his need for God. Through The Confessions he leaves himself and
his past to praising God and loving him. Augustine hopes to teach others about
that love which God placed in him that led him to an eternal relationship with
God. All of Augustine’s loves in turn became love of Christ. Although Augustine
might not have realized this, it is obviously true. At first he was redirecting
his loves directly to Christ, but finally he realized all his love was for
Christ. Augustine found a place in God that he had never imagined could happen.
His guilty restless heart finally found rest in God. The Confessions is the
story of a conversion. This conversion took place in the garden; a conversion
that took place from the time he read Cicero at age eighteen; a conversion that
took place across his whole life. The story was not just of having arrived at a
certain point, but also of the long way around to get there. Love played a
significant role in this conversion. The old restless heart that Augustine once
had finally found peace and rest in God. It helped guide him towards God and
Christ in a positive way that it influenced the rest of his life. In the
Confessions, by Saint Augustine, Augustine addressed himself articulately and
passionately to the persistent questions that stirred the minds and hearts of
men since time began. The Confessions tells a story in the form of a long
conversion with God. Through this conversion to Catholic Christianity, Augustine
encounters many aspects of love. These forms of love help guide him towards an
ultimate relationship with God. His restless heart finally finds peace and rest
in God at the end of The Confessions. Augustine finds many ways in which he can
find peace in God. He is genuinely sorry for having turned away from God, the
source of peace and happiness. Augustine is extremely thankful for having been
given the opportunity to live with God. Augustine uses love as his gate to God’s
grace.
