The Spirituality Of Saint Augustine

★ Publishers Weekly starred review One of the Top 100 Books and One of the 5 Best Books in Religion for 2019, Publishers Weekly Christianity Today 2020 Book Award Winner (Spiritual Formation) Outreach 2020 Resource of the Year (Spiritual Growth) Foreword INDIES 2019 Honorable Mention for Religion This is not a book about Saint Augustine. In a way, it's a book Augustine has written about each of us. Popular speaker and award-winning author James K. A. Smith has spent time on the road with Augustine, and he invites us to take this journey too, for this ancient African thinker knows far more about us than we might expect. Following Smith's successful You Are What You Love, this book shows how Augustine can be a pilgrim guide to a spirituality that meets the complicated world we live in. Augustine, says Smith, is the patron saint of restless hearts--a guide who has been there, asked our questions, and knows our frustrations and failed pursuits. Augustine spent a lifetime searching for his heart's true home and he can help us find our way. "What makes Augustine a guide worth considering," says Smith, "is that he knows where home is, where rest can be found, what peace feels like, even if it is sometimes ephemeral and elusive along the way." Addressing believers and skeptics alike, this book shows how Augustine's timeless wisdom speaks to the worries and struggles of contemporary life, covering topics such as ambition, sex, friendship, freedom, parenthood, and death. As Smith vividly and colorfully brings Augustine to life for 21st-century readers, he also offers a fresh articulation of Christianity that speaks to our deepest hungers, fears, and hopes.

Augustine has put an important mark on later Christian thinking. Moreover, he composed a lot of writings: more than eight hundred sermons, some three hundred letters, and a hundred works in which he unfolds his theological vision. This book presents some basic thoughts on the spirituality of this great church father. In different ways the author clarifies in which sense the spirituality of Augustine can be a breath of fresh air for our times. The conversion experience that Augustine went through ultimately became the experience of a growing trust in God who first loved us. Step by step, Augustine unfolded Christ in his many sermons and writings as a humble physician, mediator, and shepherd. Augustine developed a spirituality of togetherness: inner life is intrinsically linked to community life and apostolate. The spirituality of the Church as the Whole Christ is expressed in the loving care of the poor and vulnerable. His lived experience of the value of friendship and hospitality, the precious treasure of faith in Christ, the humble Physician, his concept of the Pilgrim-Church, and his vision of Mary, the dignity of the earth remain invaluable for the twenty-first century.

The following dissertation concerning the Trinity, as the reader ought to be informed, has been written in order to guard against the sophistries of those who disdain to begin with faith, and are deceived by a crude and perverse love of reason. Now one class of such men endeavor to transfer to things incorporeal and spiritual the ideas they have formed, whether through experience of the bodily senses, or by natural human wit and diligent quickness, or by the aid of art, from things corporeal; so as to seek to measure and conceive of the former by the latter. Aeterna Press

'The reader who has never met Augustine before ought to go first of all to the Confessions,' reflected the Trappist monk and scholar Thomas Merton. 'Augustine lived the theology that he wrote. . . . He experienced the reality of Christ living in his own soul.' Saint Augustine, the celebrated theologian who served as Bishop of Hippo from A.D. 396 until his death in A.D. 430, is widely regarded as one of the most influential thinkers in the Western world. Written in the form of a long prayer addressed directly to God, Augustine's Confessions, the remarkable chronicle of his conversion to Christianity, endures as the greatest spiritual autobiography of all time. 'Augustine possessed a strong, capacious, argumentative mind,' wrote Edward Gibbon. 'He boldly sounded the dark abyss of grace, predestination, free-will, and original sin.' And the eminent historian Jaroslav Pelikan remarked: 'There has, quite literally, been no century of the sixteen centuries since the conversion of Augustine in which he has not been a major intellectual, spiritual, and cultural force.'

The Confessions of Saint Augustine is considered the all time number one Christian classic. It is an extended poetic, passionate, intimate prayer. Augustine was probably forty-three when he began this endeavor. He had been a baptized Catholic for ten years, a priest for six, and a bishop for only two. His pre-baptismal life raised questions in the community. Was his conversion genuine? The first hearers were captivated, as many millions have been over the following sixteen centuries. His experience of God speaks to us across time with little need of transpositions. This new translation masterfully captures his experience.Writing in the last years of the fourth century a.d., Saint Augustine of Hippo created what is at once the first true autobiography in Western literature and among the most sophisticated yet accessible theological arguments in the history of Christianity. With extraordinary candor and psychological acumen, Augustine recounts his passage from a life of sensuality, Manichaean superstition, and empty careerism to a genuine spiritual awakening, and he articulates views on marriage, morality, and faith that have shaped our discourse ever since. The Confessions allows us to appreciate both the startling modernity of Augustine's insights and the imperishable poetry of his voice. With a new Preface by MacArthur Fellow Patricia Hampl, author of Virgin Time and A Romantic Education.In the annals of spirituality, certain books stand out both for their historical importance and for their continued relevance. The Vintage Spiritual Classics series offers the greatest of these works in authoritative new editions, with specially commissioned essays by noted contemporary commentators. Filled with eloquence and fresh insight, encouragement and solace, Vintage Spiritual Classics are incomparable resources for all readers who seek a more substantive understanding of mankind's relation to the divine.

With: Historical commentary Biographical info Appendix with further readings For nearly 2,000 years, Christian mystics, martyrs, and sages have documented their search for the divine. Their writings have bestowed boundless wisdom upon subsequent generations. But they have also burdened many spiritual seekers. The sheer volume of available material creates a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. Enter the Upper Room Spiritual Classics series, a collection of authoritative texts on Christian spirituality curated for the everyday reader. Designed to introduce 15 spiritual giants and the range of their works, these volumes are a first-rate resource for beginner and expert alike. Writings of Augustine compiles some of the most profound and moving writings of the 4th-century African Christian who had a vast influence on the Christian church and Western culture. Included are excerpts from Augustine's Confessions and other writings.