Augustine of Hippo: Selected Writings (continued)
INTRODUCTION
the needs of his neighbor, nor so absorbed in action that he forgets the contemplation of God. The caritas veritatis (love of truth) must give way to the necessitas caritatis (necessity of charity).
Why this primacy of charity? Augustine teaches that no one comes to the truth except through love.®? And in reflecting deeply on St. John's words he has recognized the love quality of interpersonal relationships as another image of the Trinity. Fraternal love is a participation in the unity of God, in his intimate life; that intimate life is the life of Trinitarian relationships of love. Through rightly ordered love, the love of generosity, human persons participate in the Trinitarian mystery and enjoy a foretaste of eternal life: the communion of Saints, the City of God.%°
The primacy of charity is a call to community where there can be a constant and common search for truth. The deepest understanding of the Church is that which sees its reality as a community of the faithful united by their common love of Christ. The role of religious monasteries is to witness to the possibility of true community by manifesting, as far as possible to human frailty, the actuality of community. All Augustinian congregations are intended to be schools of charity. This is their common goal; it is also the way to attain it. Community life, according to Augustine, is genuine to the extent that all are intent on God; God gives himself, however, only to those who love one another. This spirituality of Christian community is a friendship in Christ that liberates and develops all that is best in human persons. Such is Augustine's view of the primary aspect of evangelical life: the fulfillment of Christ's prayer "that all may be one, as you Father are in me, and I in you."?!
Augustine tells us today as in his own day that "'only they live together in harmony in whom the charity of Christ is perfectly found."°? And with the eyes of faith we may recognize God in his world when we understand man as God's sacred symbol—an image of the Triune God in the human soul and in personal relationships. And this is because the God manifested in Christ is the God who is Love.
By contact with the very words of Augustine every genera-
89. Augustine, Against Faustus, 32.18. 90. Augustine, Sermon on the Creed, 2.4. 91. Jn. 17:21. 92. Augustine, Homilies on Ps., 132.12.