Originally published at crisis magazine
Editor’s Note: This is the eleventh in a series of articles on St. Augustine, one of the greatest of Church Fathers, and how his writings still apply today.
“I must now carry my thoughts back to the abominable things I did in those days,” writes Augustine at the very beginning of Book II, “the sins of the flesh which defiled my soul.” He has left his boyhood behind, the period during which he first went off to school, where pupils were regularly beaten by their teachers (“my one great bugbear,” is how he describes it); despite which the young Augustine, an unusually gifted child, manages to acquire enough knowledge and skill to justify the sacrifices his parents made to send him there. And while the memories remain bitter, he nevertheless needs to tell God in order, as he puts it,
to savor your sweetness, the sweetness that does not deceive but brings real joy and never fails. For love of your love I shall retrieve myself from the havoc of disruption which tore me to pieces when I turned away from you, whom alone I should have sought…
And why, exactly, had he turned away from God? It certainly brought him no
