Augustine as Patron of the New Evangelization

As we approach the fifteenth anniversary of the Augustine Institute, it might well occur to readers of Faith and Culture to ask: why is St. Augustine the patron of an Institute dedicated to the New Evangelization? St. John Paul II, after all, is the man who coined the phrase “the New Evangelization” and there are many other saints who are known for their evangelical work more than St. Augustine. Nevertheless, to the founders of the Institute, St. Augustine was the obvious choice.

The Augustine Institute is an educational apostolate, dedicated to helping Catholics at every level to understand, to live and to share their faith. As much as Augustine is now known as the great doctor of the Western church, responsible for such formidable tomes as The City of God, he was a teacher at his very core. Prior to his conversion to Christianity, Augustine was a teacher of rhetoric and a pagan speaker at the top of his profession, even being commissioned to give a speech in honor of the emperor while he was resident in Milan. When he became Catholic at age thirty, he did not leave those skills behind him, but turned them to the Lord’s use. Augustine was a preacher and pastor, and due to the diligent work of his scribes and friends, he left to posterity about three hundred homilies, in addition to his homilies on 1 John and on every Psalm. Augustine’s daily work was caring for the souls at Hippo, and he excelled at communicating profound theological truths to every audience, something we attempt to emulate in all we do here at the Augustine Institute. Augustine even wrote a manual for aspiring preachers, explaining how to understand the language of Scripture and how to interpret it effectively and clearly (this work is called On Christian Doctrine). Augustine was an educator, one of the best the Church has ever seen.

Augustine, however, is not only a wonderful patron for an educational mission, but he also shares many cultural challenges in common with us. We might tend to think of Augustine’s era as being a Christian one; he lived after emperor Constantine declared Christianity to be the religion of the Roman empire. Nevertheless, Christianity was still largely considered to be the religion of the uneducated and unsophisticated during Augustine’s time, and he himself as a young man looked down on what he saw as the simple piety of his mother Monica. Augustine preferred the more sophisticated writings of Virgil and Cicero to those of the Bible, which seemed to him to be below his standards in terms of style, and which had many passages that offended the sensibilities of a liberally educated Roman. We might, then, think of Augustine as living in a pre-Christian society as we are living in a post-Christian one. Although Christian ideas were certainly current in Augustine’s time, they were not seen as being especially persuasive, and more urbane Romans left Christianity to the unlearned masses. Christianity today is likewise often dismissed out of hand as a religion which is not populated by the most clear and forward-thinking in our society. 

Augustine, as our patron, therefore, has a lot to offer as an exemplar when faced with a culture that is hostile to the Bible and even to the central message of the gospel. But Augustine serves as a patron specifically for the New Evangelization because he also worked tirelessly for the conversion of those who had one foot in secular Roman society and one foot in the church – many such people populated his own congregation. The New Evangelization also seeks to reach a similar audience, those who have heard the gospel, but need to hear it anew; those who might have been raised Christian but never took that for their own identity. Augustine, in fact, wrote many of his works as much for lukewarm Christians as for his Roman opponents, and in his preaching sought to set the hearts of his flock alight for love of God, when many of them were practicing pagan religion on the side.

Augustine is a great patron from our times and for our mission – St. Augustine, pray for us!