28. Aphraates, "the Sage" (continued)
Aphraates, "the Sage"
n our excursion into the world of the Fathers of the Church, I would like to guide you to a little-known part of this universe of faith, in the territories where the Semitic-language churches flourished, still uninfluenced by Greek thought. These churches developed throughout the fourth century in the Near East, from the Holy Land to Lebanon and to Mesopotamia. In that century, which was a period of formation on the ecclesial and literary level, these communities contributed to the ascetic-monastic phenomenon with autochthonous characteristics that did not come under Egyptian monastic influence. The Syriac communities of the fourth century, therefore, represent the Semitic world from which the Bible itself has come, and they are an expression of a Christianity whose theological formulation had not yet entered into contact with different cultural currents, but lived in their own way of thinking. They are churches in which asceticism in its various eremitic forms (hermits in the desert, in caverns, recluses, stylites') and monasticism in forms of community life, exert a role of vital importance in the development of theological and spiritual thought.
I would like to introduce this world through the great figure of Aphraates, known also by the sobriquet "the Sage." He was one of the most important and at the same time most enigmatic personages of fourthcentury Syriac Christianity. A native of the Ninive-Mossul region, today in Iraq, he lived during the first half of the fourth century. We have little information about his life; he maintained, however, close ties with the ascetic-monastic environment of the Syriac-speaking church, of which he has given us some information in his work and to which he dedicates part of his reflection. Indeed, according to some sources he was the head of a monastery and later consecrated a bishop. He wrote twenty-three homilies, known as Expositions or Demonstrations, on various aspects of Christian life, such as faith, love, fasting, humility, prayer, the ascetic life, and also the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, between the Old and New Testaments. He wrote in a simple style with short sentences and sometimes with contrasting parallelisms; nevertheless, he was able to weave consistent discourses with a well-articulated development of the various arguments he treated.
Aphraates was from an ecclesial community situated on the frontier between Judaism and Christianity. It was a community strongly linked to the Mother Church of Jerusalem, and its bishops were traditionally chosen from among the so-called "family" of James, the "brother of the Lord" (cf. Mark 6:3). They were people linked by blood and by faith to the Church of Jerusalem. Aphraates' language was Syriac, therefore a Semitic language like the Hebrew of the Old Testament and like the Aramaic spoken by Jesus himself. Aphraates' ecclesial community was a community that sought to remain faithful to the Judeo-Christian tradition, of which it felt it was a daughter. It therefore maintained a close relationship with the Jewish world and its sacred books. Significantly, Aphraates defines himself as a "disciple of the Sacred Scripture" of the Old and New Testaments,2 which he considers as his only source of inspiration, having recourse to it in such abundance as to make it the center of his reflection.
Aphraates develops various arguments in his Expositions. Faithful to Syriac tradition, he often presents the salvation wrought by Christ as a healing, and thus Christ himself as the physician.
Sin, on the other hand, is seen as a wound that only penance can heal: "A man who has been wounded in battle," Aphraates said, "is not ashamed to place himself in the hands of a wise doctor ... ; in the same way, the one who has been wounded by Satan must not be ashamed to recognize his fault and distance himself from it, asking for the medicine of penance."3 Another important aspect in Aphraates' work is his teaching on prayer, and in a special way on Christ as the teacher of prayer. The Christian prays following Jesus' teaching and example of oration: "Our Savior taught people to pray like this, saying: `Pray in secret to the One who is hidden, but who sees all'; and again: `Go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you' (Matt. 6:6).... Our Savior wants to show that God knows the desires and thoughts of the heart."4
For Aphraates, the Christian life is centered on the imitation of Christ, in taking up his yoke and following him on the way of the Gospel. One of the most useful virtues for Christ's disciple is humility. It is not a secondary aspect in the Christian's spiritual life: man's nature is humble and it is God who exalts it to his own glory. Aphraates observed that humility is not a negative value: "If man's roots are planted in the earth, his fruits ascend before the Lord of majesty."' By remaining humble, including in the earthly reality in which one lives, the Christian can enter into relationship with the Lord: "The humble man is humble, but his heart rises to lofty heights. The eyes of his face observe the earth and the eyes of his mind the lofty heights."6
Aphraates' vision of man and his physical reality is very positive: the human body, in the example of the humble Christ, is called to beauty, joy, and light: "God draws near to the man who loves, and it is right to love humility and to remain in a humble state. The humble are simple, patient, loving, integral, upright, good, prudent, calm, wise, quiet, peaceful, merciful, ready to convert, benevolent, profound, thoughtful, beautiful and attractive."' Aphraates often presented the Christian life in a clear ascetic and spiritual dimension: faith is the base, the foundation; it makes of man a temple where Christ himself dwells. Faith, therefore, makes sincere charity possible, which expresses itself in love for God and neighbor. Another important aspect in Aphraates' thought is fasting, which he understood in a broad sense. He spoke of fasting from food as a necessary practice to be charitable and pure, of fasting understood as continence with a view to ho liness, of fasting from vain or detestable words, of fasting from anger, of fasting from the possession of goods with a view to ministry, of fasting from sleep to be watchful in prayer.
Dear brothers and sisters, to conclude, we return again to Aphraates' teaching on prayer. According to this ancient "Sage," prayer is achieved when Christ dwells in the Christian's heart, and invites him to a coherent commitment to charity towards one's neighbor. In fact, he wrote:
Give relief to those in distress, visit the ailing, help the poor: this is prayer.
Prayer is good, and its works are beautiful.
Prayer is accepted when it gives relief to one's neighbor.
Prayer is heard when it includes forgiveness of affronts.
Prayer is strong when it is full of God's strength.8
With these words Aphraates invites us to a prayer that becomes Christian life, a fulfilled life, a life penetrated by faith, by openness to God and therefore to love of neighbor.
29
Saint Ephrem
ommon opinion today supposes Christianity to be a European religion which subsequently exported the culture of this continent to
other countries. But the reality is far more complex since the roots of the
Christian religion are found in the Old Testament, hence, in Jerusalem and
the Semitic world. Christianity is still nourished by these Old Testament
roots. Furthermore, its expansion in the first centuries was both towards
the West - towards the Greco-Latin world, where it later inspired European culture - and in the direction of the East, as far as Persia and India. It
thus contributed to creating a specific culture in Semitic languages with an
identity of its own. To demonstrate this cultural pluralism of the one Christian faith in its origins, I spoke in a previous catechesis of a representative of
this other Christianity who is almost unknown to us: Aphraates, the Persian
sage. Along the same lines, I would like to talk about St. Ephrem the Syrian,
who was born into a Christian family in Nisibis in about 306. He was Christianity's most important Syriac-speaking representative and uniquely succeeded in reconciling the vocations of theologian and poet. He was educated and grew up beside James, bishop of Nisibis (303-38), and with him
founded the theological school in his city. He was ordained a deacon and
was intensely active in local Christian community life until 363, the year
when Nisibis fell into Persian hands. Ephrem then emigrated to Edessa,
where he continued his activity as a preacher. He died in this city in 373, a
victim of the disease he contracted while caring for those infected with the
plague. It is not known for certain whether he was a monk, but we can be
sure in any case that he remained a deacon throughout his life and embraced virginity and poverty. Thus, the common and fundamental Chris tian identity appears in the specificity of his own cultural expression: faith,
hope - the hope which makes it possible to live poor and chaste in this
world, placing every expectation in the Lord - and lastly, charity, to the
point of giving his life through nursing those sick with the plague.
St. Ephrem has left us an important theological inheritance. His substantial opus can be divided into four categories: works written in ordinary prose (his polemic works or biblical commentaries); works written in poetic prose; homilies in verse; and lastly, hymns, undoubtedly Ephrem's most abundant production. He is a rich and interesting author in many ways, but especially from the theological point of view. It is the fact that theology and poetry converge in his work which makes it so special. If we desire to approach his doctrine, we must insist on this from the outset: namely, on the fact that he produces theology in poetical form. Poetry enabled him to deepen his theological reflection through paradoxes and images. At the same time, his theology became liturgy, became music; indeed, he was a great composer, a musician. Theology, reflection on the faith, poetry, song and praise of God go together; and it is precisely in this liturgical character that the divine truth emerges clearly in Ephrem's theology. In his search for God, in his theological activity, he employed the way of paradoxes and symbols. He made ample use of contrasting images because they served to emphasize the mystery of God.
I cannot present much of his writing here, partly because his poetry is difficult to translate, but to give at least some idea of his poetical theology I would like to cite a part of several hymns. First of all, and also with a view to the approach of Advent, I shall propose to you several splendid images taken from his hymn On the Nativity of Christ. Ephrem expressed his wonder before the Virgin in inspired tones:
"The Lord entered her and became a servant; the Word entered her, and became silent within her; thunder entered her and his voice was still; the Shepherd of all entered her; he became a Lamb in her, and came forth bleating.
"The belly of your Mother changed the order of things, 0 you who order all! Rich he went in, he came out poor: the High One went into her [Mary], he came out lowly. Brightness went into her and clothed himself, and came forth a despised form....
"He that gives food to all went in, and knew hunger. He who gives drink to all went in, and knew thirst. Naked and bare came forth from her the Clother of all things [in beauty].."'
To express the mystery of Christ, Ephrem uses a broad range of topics, expressions, and images. In one of his hymns he effectively links Adam (in Paradise) to Christ (in the Eucharist):
"It was by closing with the sword of the cherub that the path to the tree of life was closed. But for the peoples, the Lord of this tree gave himself as food in his (Eucharistic) oblation.
"The trees of the Garden of Eden were given as food to the first Adam. For us, the gardener of the Garden in person made himself food for our souls. Indeed, we had all left Paradise together with Adam, who left it behind him.
To speak of the Eucharist, Ephrem used two images, embers or burning coal and the pearl. The burning coal theme was taken from the prophet Isaiah (cf. Isa. 6:6). It is the image of one of the seraphim who picks up a burning coal with tongs and simply touches the lips of the prophet with it in order to purify them; the Christian, on the other hand, touches and consumes the Burning Coal which is Christ himself:
"In your bread hides the Spirit who cannot be consumed; in your wine is the fire that cannot be swallowed. The Spirit in your bread, fire in your wine: behold a wonder heard from our lips.
"The seraph could not bring himself to touch the glowing coal with his fingers, it was Isaiah's mouth alone that it touched; neither did the fingers grasp it nor the mouth swallow it; but the Lord has granted us to do both these things.
Here again is a final example of St. Ephrem's hymns, where he speaks of the pearl as a symbol of the riches and beauty of faith:
The figure of Ephrem is still absolutely timely for the life of the various Christian churches. We discover him in the first place as a theologian who reflects poetically, on the basis of Holy Scripture, on the mystery of man's redemption brought about by Christ, the Word of God incarnate. His is a theological reflection expressed in images and symbols taken from nature, daily life, and the Bible. Ephrem gives his poetry and liturgical hymns a didactic and catechetical genre: they are theological hymns yet at the same time suitable for recitation or liturgical song. On the occasion of liturgical feasts, Ephrem made use of these hymns to spread Church doctrine. Time has proven them to be an extremely effective catechetical instrument for the Christian community.
Ephrem's reflection on the theme of God the Creator is important: nothing in creation is isolated and the world, next to Sacred Scripture, is a Bible of God. By using his freedom wrongly, man upsets the cosmic order. The role of women was important to Ephrem. The way he spoke of them was always inspired with sensitivity and respect: the dwelling place of Jesus in Mary's womb greatly increased women's dignity. Ephrem held that just as there is no Redemption without Jesus, there is no Incarnation without Mary. The divine and human dimensions of the mystery of our redemption can already be found in Ephrem's texts; poetically and with fundamentally scriptural images, he anticipated the theological background and in some way the very language of the great Christological definitions of the fifth-century councils.
Ephrem, honored by Christian tradition with the title "Harp of the Holy Spirit," remained a deacon of the church throughout his life. It was a crucial and emblematic decision: he was a deacon, a servant, in his liturgical ministry, and more radically, in his love for Christ, whose praises he sang in an unparalleled way, and also in his love for his brethren, whom he introduced with rare skill to the knowledge of divine Revelation.
Saint Chromatius of Aquileta
n two catecheses we made an excursion through the Eastern churches of Semitic tongue, meditating on Aphraates the Persian and Ephrem the Syrian. Today, we return to the Latin world, to the north of the Roman Empire with St. Chromatius of Aquileia. This bishop exercised his ministry in the ancient Church of Aquileia, a fervent center of Christian life located in the Roman Empire's Decima regio ("Tenth Region"), the Venetia et Histria. In 388, when Chromatius assumed the episcopal throne of the city, the local Christian communities had already developed a glorious history of Gospel fidelity. Between the middle of the third century and the early years of the fourth, the persecution of Decius, Valerian, and Diocletian had taken a heavy toll of martyrs. Furthermore, the Church of Aquileia, like so many other churches of that time, had had to contend with the threat of the Arian heresy. Athanasius himself - a standard-bearer of Nicene orthodoxy whom the Arians had banished to exile - had for some time been in Aquileia, where he had taken refuge. Under the guidance of its bishops, the Christian community withstood the snares of the heresy and reinforced their own attachment to the Catholic faith.
In September 381, Aquileia was the seat of a synod that gathered about thirty-five bishops from the coasts of Africa, the Rhone Valley, and the entire Decima regio. The synod intended to eliminate the last remnants of Arianism in the West. Chromatius, a priest, also took part in the Council as peritusr for Bishop Valerian of Aquileia (370/71 to 387/88). The years around the Synod of 381 were the "Golden Age" of the inhabitants of Aquileia. St. Jerome, a native of Dalmatia, and Rufinus of Concordia, spoke nostalgically of their sojourn in Aquileia (370-73), in that sort of theological cenacle which Jerome did not hesitate to define "tamquam chorus beatorum," "like a choir of blesseds.."2 It was in this Upper Room - some aspects of which are reminiscent of the community experiences directed by Eusebius of Vercelli and by Augustine - that the most outstanding figures of the church of the Upper Adriatic were formed.
Chromatius, however, had already learned at home to know and love Christ. Jerome himself spoke of this in terms full of admiration and compared Chromatius's mother to the prophetess Anna, his two sisters to the Wise Virgins of the Gospel parable, and Chromatius himself and his brother Eusebius to the young Samuel.3 Jerome wrote further of Chromatius and Eusebius: "Blessed Chromatius and St. Eusebius were brothers by blood, no less than by the identity of their ideals."4
Chromatius was born in Aquileia in about 345. He was ordained a deacon, then a priest; finally, he was appointed bishop of that church (388). After receiving episcopal ordination from Bishop Ambrose he dedicated himself courageously and energetically to an immense task because of the vast territory entrusted to his pastoral care: the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Aquileia, in fact, stretched from the present-day territories of Switzerland, Bavaria, Austria, and Slovenia, as far as Hungary. How well known and highly esteemed Chromatius was in the church of his time we can deduce from an episode in the life of St. John Chrysostom. When the bishop of Constantinople was exiled from his see, he wrote three letters to those he considered the most important bishops of the West seeking to obtain their support with the emperors: he wrote one letter to the bishop of Rome, the second to the bishop of Milan, and the third to the bishop of Aquileia, precisely, Chromatius.5 Those were difficult times also for Chromatius because of the precarious political situation. In all likelihood Chromatius died in exile, in Grado, while he was attempting to escape the incursions of the barbarians in 407, the same year when Chrysostom also died.
With regard to prestige and importance, Aquileia was the fourth city of the Italian peninsula and the ninth of the Roman Empire. This is another reason that explains why it was a target that attracted both Goths and Huns. In addition to causing serious bereavements and destruction, the invasions of these peoples gravely jeopardized the transmission of the works of the Fathers preserved in the episcopal library, rich in codices. St. Chromatius's writings were also dispersed, ending up here and there, and were often attributed to other authors: to John Chrysostom (partly because of the similar beginning of their two names, Chromatius and Chrysostom); or to Ambrose or Augustine; or even to Jerome, to whom Chromatius had given considerable help in the revision of the text and in the Latin translation of the Bible. The rediscovery of a large part of the work of Chromatius is due to fortunate events, which has made it possible only in recent years to piece together a fairly consistent corpus of his writings: more than forty homilies, ten of which are fragments, and more than sixty treatises of commentary on Matthew's Gospel.
Chromatius was a wise teacher and a zealous pastor. His first and main commitment was to listen to the Word, to be able to subsequently proclaim it: he always bases his teaching on the Word of God and constantly returns to it. Certain subjects are particularly dear to him: first of all, the Trinitarian mystery, which he contemplated in its revelation throughout the history of salvation.
Then, the theme of the Holy Spirit: Chromatius constantly reminds the faithful of the presence and action in the life of the Church of the Third Person of the Most Holy Trinity. But the holy bishop returns with special insistence to the mystery of Christ. The Incarnate Word is true God and true man: he took on humanity in its totality to endow it with his own divinity. These truths, which he also reaffirmed explicitly in order to counter Arianism, were to end up about fifty years later in the definition of the Council of Chalcedon. The heavy emphasis on Christ's human nature led Chromatius to speak of the Virgin Mary. His Mariological doctrine is clear and precise. To him we owe evocative descriptions of the Virgin Most Holy: Mary is the "evangelical Virgin capable of accepting God"; she is the "immaculate and inviolate ewe lamb" who conceived the "Lamb clad in purple."6 The bishop of Aquileia often compares the Virgin with the Church: both, in fact, are "virgins" and "mothers." Chromatius developed his ecclesiology above all in his commentary on Matthew. These are some of the recurring concepts: the Church is one, she is born from the Blood of Christ; she is a precious garment woven by the Holy Spirit; the Church is where the fact that Christ was born of a Virgin is proclaimed, where brotherhood and harmony flourish. One image of which Chromatius is especially fond is that of the ship in a storm - and his were stormy times, as we have heard: "There is no doubt," the holy bishop says, "that this ship represents the Church." 7
As the zealous pastor that he was, Chromatius was able to speak to his people with a fresh, colorful, and incisive language. Although he was not ignorant of the perfect Latin cursus,8 he preferred to use the vernacular, rich in images easy to understand. Thus, for example, drawing inspiration from the sea, he compared on the one hand the natural catching of fish which, caught and landed, die; and on the other, Gospel preaching, thanks to which men and women are saved from the murky waters of death and ushered into true life.9
Again, in the perspective of a good pastor, during a turbulent period such as his, ravaged by the incursions of barbarians, he was able to set himself beside the faithful to comfort them and open their minds to trust in God, who never abandons his children.
Lastly, as a conclusion to these reflections, let us include an exhortation of Chromatius which is still perfectly applicable today: "Let us pray to the Lord with all our heart and with all our faith," the bishop of Aquileia recommends in one of his sermons, "let us pray to him to deliver us from all enemy incursions, from all fear of adversaries. Do not look at our merits but at his mercy, at him who also in the past deigned to set the Children of Israel free, not for their own merits but through his mercy. May he protect us with his customary merciful love and bring about for us what holy Moses said to the Children of Israel: The Lord will fight to defend you, and you will be silent (Exod. 14:14). It is he who fights, it is he who wins the victory.... And so that he may condescend to do so, we must pray as much as possible. He himself said, in fact, through the mouth of the prophet: Call on me on the day of tribulation; I will set you free and you will give me glory (Ps. 50 [49]:15)•"10 God knows us, he knows me, he knows each one of us, he loves me, he will not abandon me.
31
Saint Paulinus of Nola
he Father of the Church to whom we turn our attention is St. Paulinus of Nola. Paulinus, a contemporary of St. Augustine to whom he was bound by a firm friendship, exercised his ministry at Nola in Campania, where he was a monk and later a priest and a bishop. However, he was originally from Aquitaine in the south of France, to be precise, Bordeaux, where he was born into a high-ranking family. It was here, with the poet Ausonius as his teacher, that he received a fine literary education. He left his native region for the first time to follow his precocious political career, which was to see him rise while still young to the position of governor of Campania. In this public office he attracted admiration for his gifts of wisdom and gentleness. It was during this period that grace caused the seed of conversion to grow in his heart. The incentive came from the simple and intense faith with which the people honored the tomb of a saint, Felix the Martyr, at the shrine of present-day Cimitile. As the head of public government, Paulinus took an interest in this shrine and had a hospice for the poor built and a road to facilitate access to it for the many pilgrims.
While he was doing his best to build the city on earth, he continued discovering the way to the city in heaven. The encounter with Christ was the destination of a laborious journey, strewn with ordeals. Difficult circumstances which resulted from his loss of favor with the political authorities made the transience of things tangible to him. Once he had arrived at faith, he was to write: "The man without Christ is dust and shadow."' Anxious to shed light on the meaning of life, he went to Milan to attend the school of Ambrose. He then completed his Christian formation in his native land, where he was baptized by Bishop Delphinus of Bordeaux. Marriage was also a landmark on his journey of faith. Indeed, he married Therasia, a devout noblewoman from Barcelona, with whom he had a son. He would have continued to live as a good lay Christian had not the infant's death after only a few days intervened to rouse him, showing him that God had other plans for his life. Indeed, he felt called to consecrate himself to Christ in a rigorous ascetic life.
In full agreement with his wife Therasia, he sold his possessions for the benefit of the poor and, with her, left Aquitaine for Nola. Here, the husband and wife settled beside the basilica of the patron saint, Felix, living henceforth in chaste brotherhood according to a form of life which also attracted others. The community's routine was typically monastic, but Paulinus, who had been ordained a priest in Barcelona, took it upon himself despite his priestly status to care for pilgrims. This won him the liking and trust of the Christian community, which chose Paulinus, upon the death of the bishop in about 409, as his successor in the see of Nola. Paulinus intensified his pastoral activity, distinguished by special attention to the poor. He has bequeathed to us the image of an authentic pastor of charity, as St. Gregory the Great described him in chapter three of his Dialogues, in which he depicts Paulinus in the heroic gesture of offering himself as a prisoner in the place of a widow's son. The historical truth of this episode is disputed, but the figure of a bishop with a great heart who knew how to make himself close to his people in the sorrowful trials of the barbarian invasions lives on.
Paulinus's conversion impressed his contemporaries. His teacher Ausonius, a pagan poet, felt "betrayed" and addressed bitter words to him, reproaching him on the one hand for his "contempt," considered insane, of material goods, and on the other, for abandoning his literary vocation. Paulinus replied that giving to the poor did not mean contempt for earthly possessions but rather an appreciation of them for the loftiest aim of charity. As for literary commitments, what Paulinus had taken leave of was not his poetic talent - which he was to continue to cultivate - but poetic forms inspired by mythology and pagan ideals. A new aesthetic now governed his sensibility: the beauty of God incarnate, crucified and risen, whose praises he now sang. Actually, he had not abandoned poetry but was henceforth to find his inspiration in the Gospel, as he says in this verse: "To my mind the only art is the faith, and Christ is my poetry" (At nobis ars una fides, et musica Christus).2
Paulinus's poems are songs of faith and love in which the daily history of small and great events is seen as a history of salvation, a history of God with us. Many of these compositions, the so-called Carmina natalicia,3 are linked to the annual feast of Felix the Martyr, whom he had chosen as his heavenly patron. Remembering St. Felix, Paulinus desired to glorify Christ himself, convinced as he was that the saint's intercession had obtained the grace of conversion for him: "In your light, joyful, I loved Christ."4 He desired to express this very concept by enlarging the shrine with a new basilica, which he had decorated in such a way that the paintings, described by suitable captions, would constitute a visual catechesis for pilgrims. Thus, he explained his project in a poem dedicated to another great catechist, St. Nicetas of Remesiana, as he accompanied him on a visit to his basilicas: "I now want you to contemplate the paintings that unfold in a long series on the walls of the painted porticos.... It seemed to us useful to portray sacred themes in painting throughout the house of Felix, in the hope that when the peasants see the painted figure, these images will awaken interest in their astonished minds." 5 Today, it is still possible to admire the remains of these works which rightly place the Saint of Nola among the figures with a Christian archeological reference.
Life in accordance with the ascetic discipline of Cimitile was spent in poverty and prayer and was wholly immersed in lectio divina.6 Scripture, read, meditated upon and assimilated, was the light in whose brightness the saint of Nola examined his soul as he strove for perfection. He told those who were struck by his decision to give up material goods that this act was very far from representing total conversion. "The relinquishment or sale of temporal goods possessed in this world is not the completion but only the beginning of the race in the stadium; it is not, so to speak, the goal, but only the starting point. In fact, the athlete does not win because he strips himself, for he undresses precisely in order to begin the contest, whereas he only deserves to be crowned as victorious when he has fought properly."7
After the ascetic life and the Word of God came charity; the poor were at home in the monastic community. Paulinus did not limit himself to distributing alms to them: he welcomed them as though they were Christ himself. He reserved a part of the monastery for them and by so doing, it seemed to him that he was not so much giving as receiving, in the exchange of gifts between the hospitality offered and the prayerful gratitude of those assisted. He called the poor his "masters"8 and, remarking that they were housed on the lower floor, liked to say that their prayers constituted the foundations of his house.9
St. Paulinus did not write theological treatises, but his poems and ample correspondence are rich in a lived theology, woven from God's Word, constantly examined as a light for life. The sense of the Church as a mystery of unity emerges in particular from them. Paulinus lived communion above all through a pronounced practice of spiritual friendship. He was truly a master in this, making his life a crossroads of elect spirits: from Martin of Tours to Jerome, from Ambrose to Augustine, from Delphinus of Bordeaux to Nicetas of Remesiana, from Victricius of Rouen to Rufinus of Aquileia, from Pammachius to Sulpicius Severus and many others, more or less well known. It was in this atmosphere that the intense pages written to Augustine came into being. Over and above the content of the individual letters, one is impressed by the warmth with which the saint of Nola sings of friendship itself as a manifestation of the one Body of Christ, enlivened by the Holy Spirit. Here is an important passage that comes at the beginning of the correspondence between the two friends: "It is not surprising if, despite being far apart, we are present to each other and, without being acquainted, know each other, because we are members of one body, we have one head, we are steeped in one grace, we live on one loaf, we walk on one road and we dwell in the same house."10 As can be seen, this is a very beautiful description of what it means to be Christian, to be the Body of Christ, to live within the Church's communion. The theology of our time has found the key to approaching the mystery of the Church precisely in the concept of communion. The witness of St. Paulinus of Nola helps us to perceive the Church, as she is presented to us by the Second Vatican Council, as a sacrament of intimate union with God, hence, of unity among all of us and, lastly, among the whole human race."
32
Saint Augustine of Hippo (1)
would like to speak of the greatest Father of the Latin Church, St. Augustine. This man of passion and faith, of the highest intelligence and tireless in his pastoral care, a great saint and doctor of the Church is often known, at least by hearsay, even by those who ignore Christianity or who are not familiar with it, because he left a very deep mark on the cultural life of the West and on the whole world. Because of his special importance St. Augustine's influence was widespread. It could be said on the one hand that all the roads of Latin Christian literature led to Hippo (today Annaba, on the coast of Algeria), the place where he was bishop from 395 to his death in 430, and, on the other, that from this city of Roman Africa, many other roads of later Christianity and of Western culture itself branched out.
A civilization has seldom encountered such a great spirit who was able to assimilate Christianity's values and exalt its intrinsic wealth, inventing ideas and forms that were to nourish the future generations, as Paul VI also stressed: "It may be said that all the thought-currents of the past meet in his works and form the source which provides the whole doctrinal tradition of succeeding ages."' Augustine is also the Father of the Church who left the greatest number of works. Possidius, his biographer, said that it seemed impossible that one man could have written so many things in his lifetime. We shall speak of these different works at one of our meetings soon. Today, we shall focus on his life, which is easy to reconstruct from his writings, in particular the Confessions, his extraordinary spiritual autobi ography written in praise of God. This is his most famous work; and rightly so, since it is precisely Augustine's Confessions, with their focus on interiority and psychology, that constitute a unique model in Western literature, and not only Western but even non-religious, to modern times. This attention to the spiritual life, to the mystery of the "I," to the mystery of God who is concealed in the "I," is something quite extraordinary, without precedent, and remains forever, as it were, a spiritual "peak."
But to come back to his life: Augustine was born in Tagaste in the Roman province of Numidia, Africa, on 13 November 354 to Patricius, a pagan who later became a catechumen, and Monica, a fervent Christian. This passionate woman, venerated as a saint, exercised an enormous influence on her son and raised him in the Christian faith. Augustine had also received the salt, a sign of acceptance in the catechumenate, and was always fascinated by the figure of Jesus Christ; indeed, he said that he had always loved Jesus but had drifted further and further away from ecclesial faith and practice, as also happens to many young people today.
However, since he was convinced that without Jesus the truth cannot be said effectively to have been found and since Jesus' name was not mentioned in this book, immediately after he read it he began to read Scrip ture, the Bible. But it disappointed him. This was not only because the Latin style of the translation of the Sacred Scriptures was inadequate but also because to him their content itself did not seem satisfying. In the scriptural narratives of wars and other human vicissitudes, he discovered neither the loftiness of philosophy nor the splendor of the search for the truth which is part of it. Yet he did not want to live without God and thus sought a religion which corresponded to his desire for the truth and also with his desire to draw close to Jesus. Thus, he fell into the net of the Manichees, who presented themselves as Christians and promised a totally rational religion. They said that the world was divided into two principles: good and evil. And in this way the whole complexity of human history can be explained. Their dualistic morals also pleased St. Augustine, because it included a very high morality for the elect: and those like him who adhered to it could live a life better suited to the situation of the time, especially for a young man. He therefore became a Manichee, convinced at that time that he had found the synthesis between rationality and the search for the truth and love of Jesus Christ. Manicheism also offered him a concrete advantage in life: joining the Manichees facilitated the prospects of a career. By belonging to that religion, which included so many influential figures, he was able to continue his relationship with a woman and to advance in his career. By this woman he had a son, Adeodatus, who was very dear to him and very intelligent, who was later to be present during the preparation for baptism near Lake Como, taking part in those "Dialogues" which St. Augustine has passed down to us. The boy unfortunately died prematurely. Having been a grammar teacher since his twenties in the city of his birth, he soon returned to Carthage, where he became a brilliant and famous teacher of rhetoric. However, with time Augustine began to distance himself from the faith of the Manichees. They disappointed him precisely from the intellectual viewpoint since they proved incapable of dispelling his doubts. He moved to Rome and then to Milan, where the imperial court resided at that time and where he obtained a prestigious post through the good offices and recommendations of the prefect of Rome, Symmacus, a pagan hostile to St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan.
In Milan, Augustine acquired the habit of listening - at first for the purpose of enriching his rhetorical baggage - to the eloquent preaching of Bishop Ambrose, who had been a representative of the emperor for northern Italy. The African rhetorician was fascinated by the words of the great Milanese prelate; and not only by his rhetoric. It was above all the content that increasingly touched Augustine's heart. The great difficulty with the Old Testament, because of its lack of rhetorical beauty and lofty philosophy was resolved in St. Ambrose's preaching through his typological interpretation of the Old Testament: Augustine realized that the whole of the Old Testament was a journey toward Jesus Christ. Thus, he found the key to understanding the beauty and even the philosophical depth of the Old Testament and grasped the whole unity of the mystery of Christ in history, as well as the synthesis between philosophy, rationality, and faith in the Logos, in Christ, the Eternal Word who was made flesh.
Augustine soon realized that the allegorical interpretation of Scripture and the Neoplatonic philosophy practiced by the bishop of Milan enabled him to solve the intellectual difficulties which, when he was younger during his first approach to the biblical texts, had seemed insurmountable to him.
Thus, Augustine followed his reading of the philosophers' writings by reading Scripture anew, especially the Pauline letters. His conversion to Christianity on 15 August 386 therefore came at the end of a long and tormented inner journey - of which we shall speak in another catechesis - and the African moved to the countryside, north of Milan by Lake Como - with his mother Monica, his son Adeodatus, and a small group of friends - to prepare himself for baptism. So it was that at the age of 32 Augustine was baptized by Ambrose in the cathedral of Milan on 24 April 387, during the Easter Vigil.
After his baptism, Augustine decided to return to Africa with his friends, with the idea of living a community life of the monastic kind at the service of God. However, while awaiting their departure in Ostia, his mother fell ill unexpectedly and died shortly afterwards, breaking her son's heart. Having returned to his homeland at last, the convert settled in Hippo for the very purpose of founding a monastery. In this city on the African coast he was ordained a priest in 391, despite his reticence, and with a few companions began the monastic life which had long been in his mind, dividing his time between prayer, study, and preaching. All he wanted was to be at the service of the truth. He did not feel he had a vocation to pastoral life but realized later that God was calling him to be a pastor among others and thus to offer people the gift of the truth. He was ordained a bishop in Hippo four years later, in 395. Augustine continued to deepen his study of Scripture and of the texts of the Christian tradition and was an exemplary bishop in his tireless pastoral commitment: he preached several times a week to his faithful, supported the poor and orphans, supervised the formation of the clergy and the organization of men's and women's monasteries. In short, the former rhetorician asserted himself as one of the most important exponents of Christianity of that time. He was very active in the government of his diocese - with remarkable, even civil, implications - in the more than thirty-five years of his episcopate, and the bishop of Hippo actually exercised a vast influence in his guidance of the Catholic Church in Roman Africa and, more generally, in the Christianity of his time, coping with religious tendencies and tenacious, disruptive heresies such as Manicheism, Donatism, and Pelagianism, which endangered the Christian faith in the one God, rich in mercy.
And Augustine entrusted himself to God every day until the very end of his life: smitten by fever, while for almost three months his Hippo was being besieged by Vandal invaders, the bishop - his friend Possidius recounts in his Vita Augustini - asked that the penitential psalms be transcribed in large characters, "and that the sheets be attached to the wall, so that while he was bedridden during his illness he could see and read them and he shed constant hot tears."3 This is how Augustine spent the last days of his life. He died on 28 August 430, when he was not yet seventy-six. We will devote our next encounters to his work, his message, and his inner experience.
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Saint Augustine of Hippo (2)
would like to talk about the great bishop of Hippo, St. Augustine. He chose to appoint his successor four years before he died. Thus, on 26 September 426, he gathered the people in the Basilica of Peace at Hippo to present to the faithful the one he had designated for this task. He said: "In this life we are all mortal, and the day which shall be the last of life on earth is to every man at all times uncertain; but in infancy there is hope of entering boyhood ... looking forward from boyhood to youth, from youth to manhood and from manhood to old age; whether these hopes may be realized or not is uncertain, but there is in each case something which may be hoped for. But old age has no other period of this life to look forward to with expectation: in any case, how long old age may be prolonged is uncertain.... I came to this town - for such was the will of God - when I was in the prime of life. I was young then, but now I am old."' At this point Augustine named the person he had chosen as his successor, the presbyter Heraclius. The assembly burst into an applause of approval, shouting twenty-three times, "To God be thanks! To Christ be praise!" With other acclamations the faithful also approved what Augustine proposed for his future: he wanted to dedicate the years that were left to him to a more intense study of Sacred Scripture.'
Indeed, what followed were four years of extraordinary intellectual activity: he brought important works to conclusion, he embarked on others, equally demanding, held public debates with heretics - he was always seeking dialogue - and intervened to foster peace in the African prov inces threatened by barbarian southern tribes. He wrote about this to Count Darius, who had come to Africa to settle the disagreement between Boniface and the imperial court which the tribes of Mauritania were exploiting for their incursions: "It is a higher glory still," he said in his letter, "to stay war itself with a word, than to slay men with the sword, and to procure or maintain peace by peace, not by war. For those who fight, if they are good men, doubtlessly seek peace; nevertheless, it is through blood. Your mission, however, is to prevent the shedding of blood."3 Unfortunately, the hope of pacification in the African territories was disappointed; in May 429, the Vandals, whom out of spite Boniface had invited to Africa, passed the straits of Gibraltar and streamed into Mauritania. The invasion rapidly reached the other rich African provinces. In May or June 430, "the destroyers of the Roman Empire," as Possidius described these barbarians,4 were surrounding and besieging Hippo.
Boniface had also sought refuge in the city. Having been reconciled with the court too late, he was now trying in vain to block the invaders' entry. Possidius, Augustine's biographer, describes Augustine's sorrow: "More tears than usual were his bread, night and day, and when he had reached the very end of his life, his old age caused him, more than others, grief and mourning."' And he explains: "Indeed, that man of God saw the massacres and the destruction of the city; houses in the countryside were pulled down and the inhabitants killed by the enemy or put to flight and dispersed. Private churches belonging to priests and ministers were demolished, sacred virgins and religious scattered on every side; some died under torture, others were killed by the sword, still others taken prisoner, losing the integrity of their soul and body and even their faith, reduced by their enemies to a long, drawn-out and painful slavery."6
Despite being old and weary, Augustine stood in the breach, comforting himself and others with prayer and meditation on the mysterious designs of Providence. In this regard, he spoke of the "old-age of the world"and this Roman world was truly old - he spoke of this old age as years earlier he had spoken to comfort the refugees from Italy when Alaric's Goths had invaded the city of Rome in 410. In old age, he said, ailments proliferate: coughs, catarrh, bleary eyes, anxiety, and exhaustion. Yet, if the world grows old, Christ is perpetually young; hence, the invitation: "Do not refuse to be rejuvenated united to Christ, even in the old world. He tells you: Do not fear, your youth will be renewed like that of the eagle (Ps. 103 [102]:5 )."7 Thus, the Christian must not lose heart, even in difficult situations, but rather he must spare no effort to help those in need. This is what the great doctor suggested in his response to Honoratus, bishop of Thiave, who had asked him whether a bishop or a priest or any man of the Church with the barbarians hot on his heels could flee to save his life: "When danger is common to all, that is, for bishops, clerics and lay people, may those who need others not be abandoned by the people whom they need. In this case, either let all depart together to safe places or let those who must remain not be deserted by those through whom, in things pertaining to the Church, their necessities must be provided for; and so let them share life in common, or share in common that which the Father of their family appoints them to suffer."8 And he concluded: "Such conduct is especially the proof of love."9 How can we fail to recognize in these words the heroic message that so many priests down the centuries have welcomed and made their own?
In the meantime, the city of Hippo resisted. Augustine's monasteryhome had opened its doors to welcome episcopal colleagues who were asking for hospitality. Also of this number was Possidius, a former disciple of Augustine; he was able to leave us his direct testimony of those last dramatic days. "In the third month of that siege," Possidius recounts, "Augustine took to his bed with a fever: it was his last illness."10 The holy old man made the most of that period when he was at last free to dedicate himself with greater intensity to prayer. He was in the habit of saying that no one, bishop, religious, or layman, however irreprehensible his conduct might seem, can face death without adequate repentance. For this reason he ceaselessly repeated between his tears, the penitential psalms he had so often recited with his people."
The worse his illness became, the more the dying bishop felt the need for solitude and prayer: "In order that no one might disturb him in his recollection, about ten days before leaving his body, he asked those of us present not to let anyone into his room outside the hours in which the doctors came to visit him or when his meals were brought. His desire was minutely complied with and in all that time he devoted himself to prayer." 12 He breathed his last on 28 August 430: his great heart rested at last in God.
"For the last rites of his body," Possidius informs us, "the sacrifice in which we took part was offered to God and then he was buried."3 His body on an unknown date was translated to Sardinia, and from here, in about 725, to the Basilica of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro in Pavia, where it still rests today. His first biographer has this final opinion of him: "He bequeathed to his Church a very numerous clergy and also monasteries of men and women full of people who had taken vows of chastity under the obedience of their superiors, as well as libraries containing his books and discourses and those of other saints, from which one learns what, through the grace of God, were his merits and greatness in the Church, where the faithful always find him alive."14 This is an opinion in which we can share. We too "find him alive" in his writings. When I read St. Augustine's writings, I do not get the impression that he is a man who died more or less 1,6oo years ago; I feel he is like a man of today: a friend, a contemporary who speaks to me, who speaks to us with his fresh and timely faith. In St. Augustine who talks to us, talks to me in his writings, we see the everlasting timeliness of his faith; of the faith that comes from Christ, the Eternal Incarnate Word, Son of God and Son of Man. And we can see that this faith is not of the past although it was preached yesterday; it is still timely today, for Christ is truly yesterday, today, and forever. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Thus, St. Augustine encourages us to entrust ourselves to this ever-living Christ and in this way find the path of life.
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Saint Augustine of Hippo (3)
e return to the important figure of St. Augustine. In 1986, the sixteenth centenary of his conversion, my beloved predecessor John Paul II dedicated a long, full document to him, the Apostolic Letter Augustinum Hipponensem.1 The Pope himself chose to describe this text as "a thanksgiving to God for the gift that he has made to the Church, and through her to the whole human race." I would like to return to the topic of conversion at another audience. It is a fundamental theme not only for Augustine's personal life but also for ours. In last Sunday's Gospel the Lord himself summed up his preaching with the word: "Repent." By following in St. Augustine's footsteps, we will be able to meditate on what this conversion is: it is something definitive, decisive, but the fundamental decision must develop, be brought about throughout our life.
Today's catechesis, however, is dedicated to the subject of faith and reason, a crucial, or better, the crucial theme for St. Augustine's biography. As a child he learned the Catholic faith from Monica, his mother. But he abandoned this faith as an adolescent because he could no longer discern its reasonableness and rejected a religion that was not, to his mind, also an expression of reason, that is, of the truth. His thirst for truth was radical and therefore led him to drift away from the Catholic faith. Yet his radicalism was such that he could not be satisfied with philosophies that did not go to the truth itself, that did not go to God and to a God who was not only the ultimate cosmological hypothesis but the true God, the God who gives life and enters into our lives.
Thus, Augustine's entire intellectual and spiritual development is also a valid model today in the relationship between faith and reason, a subject not only for believers but for every person who seeks the truth, a central theme for the balance and destiny of every human being. These two dimensions, faith and reason, should not be separated or placed in opposition; rather, they must always go hand in hand. As Augustine himself wrote after his conversion, faith and reason are "the two forces that lead us to knowledge."2 In this regard, through the two rightly famous Augustinian formulas3 that express this coherent synthesis of faith and reason: crede ut intelligas ("believe in order to understand") - believing paves the way to crossing the threshold of the truth - but also, and inseparably, intellige ut credas ("understand, the better to believe"), the believer scrutinizes the truth to be able to find God and to believe.
Augustine's two affirmations express with effective immediacy and as much corresponding depth the synthesis of this problem in which the Catholic Church sees her own journey expressed. This synthesis had been acquiring its form in history even before Christ's coming, in the encounter between the Hebrew faith and Greek thought in Hellenistic Judaism. At a later period this synthesis was taken up and developed by many Christian thinkers. The harmony between faith and reason means above all that God is not remote: he is not far from our reason and our life; he is close to every human being, close to our hearts and to our reason, if we truly set out on the journey.
Augustine felt this closeness of God to man with extraordinary intensity. God's presence in man is profound and at the same time mysterious, but he can recognize and discover it deep down inside himself. "Do not go outside," the convert says, but "return to within yourself; truth dwells in the inner man; and if you find that your nature is changeable, transcend yourself. But remember, when you transcend yourself, you are transcending a soul that reasons. Reach, therefore, to where the light of reason is lit."4 It is just like what he himself stresses with a very famous statement at the beginning of the Confessions, a spiritual biography which he wrote in praise of God: "You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.."s
God's remoteness is therefore equivalent to remoteness from oneself: "But," Augustine admitted, addressing God directly, "you were more inward than my most inward part and higher than the highest element within me, 116 interior intimo meo et superior summo meo; so that, as he adds in another passage remembering the period before his conversion, "you were there before me, but I had departed from myself. I could not even find myself, much less you."' Precisely because Augustine lived this intellectual and spiritual journey in the first person, he could portray it in his works with such immediacy, depth, and wisdom, recognizing in two other famous passages from the Confessions,8 that man is "a great enigma" (magna quaestio) and "a great abyss" (grande profundum), an enigma and an abyss that only Christ can illuminate and save us from. This is important: a man who is distant from God is also distant from himself, alienated from himself, and can only find himself by encountering God. In this way he will come back to himself, to his true self, to his true identity.
The human being, Augustine stresses later in De Civitate Dei,9 is social by nature but antisocial by vice and is saved by Christ, the one Mediator between God and humanity and the "universal way of liberty and salvation," as my predecessor John Paul II said.1° Outside this way, "which has never been lacking for the human race," St. Augustine says further, "no one has been set free, no one will be set free.."" As the one Mediator of salvation Christ is Head of the Church and mystically united with her to the point that Augustine could say: "We have become Christ. For, if he is the Head, we, the members; he and we together are the whole man." 12
People of God and house of God:13 the Church in Augustine's vision is therefore closely bound to the concept of the Body of Christ, founded on the Christological reinterpretation of the Old Testament and on the sacramental life centered on the Eucharist, in which the Lord gives us his Body and transforms us into his Body. It is then fundamental that the Church, the people of God in a Christological and not a sociological sense, be truly inserted into Christ, who, as Augustine says in a beautiful passage, "prays for us, prays in us and prays by us; he prays for us as our priest, he prays in us as our head, and he prays by us as our God: let us therefore recognize him as our voice and ourselves as his .1114
At the end of the Apostolic Letter Augustinum Hipponensem, John Paul II wished to ask the saint himself what he would have to say to the people of today and answers first of all with the words Augustine entrusted to a letter dictated shortly after his conversion: "It seems to me that the hope of finding the truth must be restored to humankind," 15 that truth which is Christ himself, true God, to whom is addressed one of the most beautiful prayers and most famous of the Confessions: "Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved you. And see, you were within and I was in the external world and sought you there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which you made. You were with me, and I was not with you. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried aloud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, you put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted you, and I feel but hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours." 16
Here then, Augustine encountered God and throughout his life experienced him to the point that this reality - which is primarily his meeting with a Person, Jesus - changed his life, as it changes the lives of everyone, men and women, who in every age have the grace to encounter him. Let us pray that the Lord will grant us this grace and thereby enable us to find his peace.
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Saint Augustine of Hippo (4)
e return to the important figure of St. Augustine, about whom I have repeatedly spoken at these catecheses. He is the Father of the Church who left us the greatest number of works and I intend to speak briefly of them. Some of Augustine's writings were of major importance, not only for the history of Christianity but also for the formation of the whole of Western culture. The clearest example is the Confessions, undoubtedly one of the most widely read books of Christian antiquity. Like various Fathers of the Church in the first centuries but on an incomparably larger scale, the bishop of Hippo in fact exercised an extensive and persistent influence, as already appears from the superabundant manuscript transcriptions of his works, which are indeed extremely numerous.
He reviewed them himself in the Retractations' several years before he died, and shortly after his death they were correctly recorded in the Indiculus ("list") added by his faithful friend Possidius to his biography of St. Augustine, Vita Augustini. The list of Augustine's works was drafted with the explicit intention of keeping their memory alive while the Vandal invasion was sweeping through all of Roman Africa, and it included at least 1,030 writings numbered by their author, with others "that cannot be numbered because he did not give them any number." Possidius, the bishop of a neighboring city, dictated these words in Hippo itself - where he had taken refuge and where he witnessed his friend's death - and it is almost certain that he based his list on the catalogue of Augustine's per sonal library. Today, more than 300 letters of the bishop of Hippo and almost 600 homilies are extant, but originally there were far more, perhaps even as many as between 3,000 and 4,000, the result of forty years of preaching by the former rhetorician who had chosen to follow Jesus and no longer to speak to important figures of the imperial court, but rather, to the simple populace of Hippo.
In the literary corpus of Augustine - more than i,ooo publications divided into philosophical, apologetic, doctrinal, moral, monastic, exegetic, and anti-heretical writings in addition precisely to the letters and homilies - certain exceptional works of immense theological and philosophical breadth stand out. First of all, it is essential to remember the Confessions mentioned above, written in thirteen books between 397 and 400 in praise of God. They are a sort of autobiography in the form of a dialogue with God. This literary genre actually mirrors St. Augustine's life, which was not one closed in on itself, dispersed in many things, but was lived substantially as a dialogue with God, hence, a life with others. The title Confessions indicates the specific nature of this autobiography. In Christian Latin this word, confessiones, developed from the tradition of the Psalms and has two meanings that are nevertheless interwoven. In the first place confessiones means the confession of our own faults, of the wretchedness of sin; but at the same time, confessiones also means praise of God, thanksgiving to God. Seeing our own wretchedness in the light of God becomes praise to God and thanksgiving, for God loves and accepts us, transforms us and raises us to himself. Of these Confessions, which met with great success during his lifetime, St. Augustine wrote: "They exercised such an influence on me while I was writing them and still exercise it when I re read them. Many brothers like these works";3 and I can say that I am one of these "brothers." Thanks to the Confessions, moreover, we can follow step by step the inner journey of this extraordinary and passionate man of God. A less well known but equally original and very important text is the Retractations, composed in two books in about 427, in which St. Augustine, by then elderly, set down a "revision" (retractatio) of his entire opus, thereby bequeathing to us a unique and very precious literary document but also a teaching of sincerity and intellectual humility.
De Civitate Dei (City of God) - an impressive work crucial to the development of Western political thought and the Christian theology of history - was written between 413 and 426 in twenty-two books. The occasion was the sack of Rome by the Goths in 410. Numerous pagans still alive and also many Christians said: Rome has fallen; the Christian God and the Apostles can now no longer protect the city. While the pagan divinities were present, Rome was the caput mundi, the great capital, and no one could have imagined that it would fall into enemy hands. Now, with the Christian God, this great city did not seem any safer. Therefore, the God of the Christians did not protect, he could not be the God to whom to entrust oneself. St. Augustine answered this objection, which also touched Christian hearts profoundly, with this impressive work, De Civitate Dei, explaining what we should and should not expect of God, and what the relationship is between the political sphere and the sphere of faith, of the Church. This book is also today a source for distinguishing clearly between true secularism and the Church's competence, the great true hope that the faith gives to us.
This important book presents the history of humanity governed by divine Providence but currently divided by two loves. This is the fundamental plan, its interpretation of history, which is the struggle between two loves: love of self, "to the point of indifference to God," and love of God, "to the point of indifference to the self,"4 to full freedom from the self for others in the light of God. This, therefore, is perhaps St. Augustine's greatest book and is of lasting importance. Equally important is the De Trinitate (On the Trinity), a work in fifteen books on the central core of the Chris tian faith, faith in the Trinitarian God. It was written in two phases: the first twelve books between 399 and 412, published without the knowledge of Augustine, who in about 420 completed and revised the entire work. Here he reflects on the Face of God and seeks to understand this mystery of God who is unique, the one Creator of the world, of us all, and yet this one God is precisely Trinitarian, a circle of love. He seeks to understand the unfathomable mystery: the actual Trinitarian being, in three Persons, is the most real and profound unity of the one God. De Doctrina Christiana (On Christian Doctrine) is instead a true and proper cultural introduction to the interpretation of the Bible and ultimately of Christianity itself, which had a crucial importance in the formation of Western culture.
Despite all his humility, Augustine must certainly have been aware of his own intellectual stature. Yet it was far more important to him to take the Christian message to the simple than to write lofty theological works. This deepest intention of his that guided his entire life appears in a letter written to his colleague Evodius, in which he informs him of his decision to suspend the dictation of the books of De Trinitate for the time being, "because they are too demanding and I think that few can understand them; it is therefore urgent to have more texts which we hope will be useful to many."s Thus, it served his purpose better to communicate the faith in a manner that all could understand rather than to write great theological works. The responsibility he felt acutely with regard to the popularization of the Christian message was later to become the origin of writings such as De Catechizandis Rudibus (On the Instruction of Beginners), a theory and also a method of catechesis, or the Psalmus contra Partem Donati (Psalm against the Party of Donatus). The Donatists were the great problem of St. Augustine's Africa, a deliberately African schism. They said: true Christianity is African Christianity. They opposed Church unity. The great bishop fought against this schism all his life, seeking to convince the Donatists that only in unity could "Africanness" also be true. And to make himself understood by the simple, who could not understand the difficult Latin of the rhetorician, he said: I must even write with grammatical errors, in a very simplified Latin. And he did so, especially in this Psalmus, a sort of simple poem against the Donatists, in order to help all the people understand that it is only through Church unity that our relationship with God may be truly fulfilled for all and that peace may grow in the world.
The mass of homilies that he would often deliver "off the cuff," transcribed by stenographers during his preaching and immediately circulated, had a special importance in this production destined for a wider public. The very beautiful Enarrationes in Psalmos (Explanations of the Psalms), read widely in the Middle Ages, stand out among them. The practice of publishing Augustine's thousands of homilies - often without the author's control - precisely explains their dissemination and later dispersion but also their vitality. In fact, because of the author's fame, the bishop of Hippo's sermons became very sought after texts and, adapted to ever new contexts, also served as models for other bishops and priests.
A fresco in the Lateran that dates back to the fourth century shows that the iconographical tradition already depicted St. Augustine with a book in his hand, suggesting, of course, his literary opus which had such a strong influence on the Christian mentality and Christian thought, but it also suggests his love for books and reading as well as his knowledge of the great culture of the past. At his death he left nothing, Possidius recounts, but "recommended that the library of the church with all the codices be kept carefully for future generations," especially those of his own works. In these, Possidius stresses, Augustine is "ever alive" and benefits his readers, although "I believe that those who were able to see and listen to him were able to draw greater benefit from being in touch with him when he himself was speaking in church, and especially those who experienced his daily life among the people."6 Yes, for us too it would have been beautiful to be able to hear him speaking. Nonetheless, he is truly alive in his writings and present in us, and so we too see the enduring vitality of the faith to which he devoted his entire life.
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Saint Augustine of Hippo (5)
wish to conclude the presentation of the figure of St. Augustine. After having dwelt on his life, works, and some aspects of his thought, I would like today to return to his inner experience which made him one of Christian history's greatest converts. During my pilgrimage to Pavia to venerate the mortal remains of this Father of the Church, I particularly dedicated my reflection to this experience of his. By doing so I wished to express to him the homage of the entire Catholic Church, but also to manifest my personal devotion and gratitude in regard to a figure to whom I feel very linked for the role he has had in my life as a theologian, priest, and pastor.' Today, it is still possible to trace St. Augustine's experiences, thanks above all to the Confessions, written to praise God and which are at the origin of one of the most specific literary forms of the West, the autobiography or personal expression of one's self-knowledge. Well, anyone who encounters this extraordinary and fascinating book, still widely read today, soon realizes how Augustine's conversion was not sudden nor fully accomplished at the beginning, but which can be defined rather as a true and proper journey that remains a model for each one of us. This itinerary certainly culminated with his conversion and then with baptism, but it was not concluded in that Easter Vigil of the year 387, when the African rhetorician was baptized in Milan by Bishop Ambrose. Augustine's journey of conversion, in fact, humbly continued to the very end of his life, so much so that one can truly say that his various steps - and three can be easily distinguished - are one single great conversion.
St. Augustine was a passionate seeker of truth: he was from the beginning and then throughout his life. The first step of his conversion journey was accomplished exactly in his progressive nearing to Christianity. Actually, he had received from his mother Monica, to whom he would remain strictly linked, a Christian education, and even though he lived an errant life during the years of his youth, he always felt a deep attraction to Christ, having drunk in with his mother's milk the love for the Lord's Name, as he himself emphasizes.' But also philosophy, especially that of a Platonic stamp, led him even closer to Christ, revealing to him the existence of the Logos or creative reason. Philosophy books showed him the existence of reason, from which the whole world came, but they could not tell him how to reach this Logos, which seemed so distant. Only by reading St. Paul's Epistles within the faith of the Catholic Church was the truth fully revealed to him. This experience was summarized by Augustine in one of the most famous passages of the Confessions: he recounts that, in the torment of his reflections, withdrawing to a garden, he suddenly heard a child's voice chanting a rhyme never heard before: tolle, lege, tolle, lege, "pick up and read, pick up and read."3 He then remembered the conversion of Antony, the Father of Monasticism, and carefully returned to the Pauline codex that he had recently read, opened it, and his glance fell on the passage of the Epistle to the Romans where the Apostle exhorts his hearers to abandon the works of the flesh and to be clothed with Christ (cf. Rom. 13:13-14). He understood that those words in that moment were addressed personally to him; they came from God through the Apostle and indicated to him what he had to do at that time. Thus, he felt the darkness of doubt clearing and he finally found himself free to give himself entirely to Christ: he described it as "your converting me to yourself."4 This was the first and decisive conversion.
The African rhetorician reached this fundamental step in his long journey thanks to his passion for man and for the truth, a passion that led him to seek God, the great and inaccessible One. Faith in Christ made him understand that God, apparently so distant, in reality was not that at all. He in fact made himself near to us, becoming one of us. In this sense, faith in Christ brought Augustine's long search on the journey to truth to completion. Only a God who made himself "tangible," one of us, was finally a God to whom he could pray, for whom and with whom he could live. This is the way to take with courage and at the same time with humility, open to a permanent purification which each of us always needs. But with the Easter Vigil of 387, as we have said, Augustine's journey was not finished. He returned to Africa and founded a small monastery where he retreated with a few friends to dedicate himself to the contemplative life and study. This was his life's dream. Now he was called to live totally for the truth, with the truth, in friendship with Christ who is truth: a beautiful dream that lasted three years, until he was, against his will, ordained a priest at Hippo and destined to serve the faithful, continuing, yes, to live with Christ and for Christ, but at the service of all. This was very difficult for him, but he understood from the beginning that only by living for others, and not simply for his private contemplation, could he really live with Christ and for Christ.
Thus, renouncing a life solely of meditation, Augustine learned, often with difficulty, to make the fruit of his intelligence available to others. He learned to communicate his faith to simple people and thus learned to live for them in what became his home town, tirelessly carrying out a generous and onerous activity which he describes in one of his most beautiful sermons: "To preach continuously, discuss, reiterate, edify, be at the disposal of everyone - it is an enormous responsibility, a great weight, an immense ef- fort."s But he took this weight upon himself, understanding that it was exactly in this way that he could be closer to Christ. To understand that one reaches others with simplicity and humility was his true second conversion.
But there is a last step to Augustine's journey, a third conversion, that brought him every day of his life to ask God for pardon. Initially, he thought that once he was baptized, in the life of communion with Christ, in the sacraments, in the Eucharistic celebration, he would attain the life proposed in the Sermon on the Mount: the perfection donated by baptism and reconfirmed in the Eucharist. During the last part of his life he understood that what he had concluded at the beginning about the Sermon on the Mount - that is, now that we are Christians, we live this ideal permanently - was mistaken. Only Christ himself truly and completely accomplishes the Sermon on the Mount. We always need to be washed by Christ, who washes our feet, and be renewed by him. We need permanent conversion. Until the end we need this humility that recognizes that we are sinners journeying along, until the Lord gives us his hand definitively and introduces us into eternal life. It was in this final attitude of humility, lived day after day, that Augustine died.
Augustine converted to Christ who is truth and love, followed him throughout his life, and became a model for every human being, for all of us in search of God. This is why I wanted to ideally conclude my pilgrimage to Pavia by consigning to the Church and to the world, before the tomb of this great lover of God, my first encyclical entitled Deus Caritas Est. I owe much, in fact, especially in the first part, to Augustine's thought. Even today, as in his time, humanity needs to know and above all to live this fundamental reality: God is love, and the encounter with him is the only response to the restlessness of the human heart; a heart inhabited by hope, still perhaps obscure and unconscious in many of our contemporaries but which already today opens us Christians to the future, so much so that St. Paul wrote that "in this hope we were saved" (Rom. 8:24). I wished to dedi cate my second encyclical to hope, Spe Salvi, and it is also largely indebted to Augustine and his encounter with God.
In a beautiful passage, St. Augustine defines prayer as the expression of desire and affirms that God responds by moving our hearts toward him. On our part we must purify our desires and our hopes to welcome the sweetness of God.' Indeed, only this opening of ourselves to others saves us. Let us pray, therefore, that we can follow the example of this great convert every day of our lives, and in every moment of our life encounter the Lord Jesus, the only One who saves us, purifies us, and gives us true joy, true life.
Biographical Notes on the Fathers
St. Ambrose of Milan (333/34 or 339/40-397) was born into a well-to-do Roman Christian family in Trier, where his father was prefect. His father died young. Ambrose's mother took her three children back to Rome and provided for their education; Ambrose learned Greek well. The one daughter became a nun; Ambrose's brother Satyrus entered civil service and died in 378. Ambrose himself rose through the ranks until he became governor of Liguria and Emilia, with his residence in Milan. In 374 the Arian bishop of Milan, Auxentius, died, and Ambrose, still unbaptized, was elected to replace him. He was baptized immediately and, eight days later, ordained bishop. He immediately devoted himself entirely to the service of the Church. Three times in his life he challenged the emperor and defended the rights of the Church or reprimanded the emperor for immoral behavior. He was among the most powerful Christian leaders of his day. Ambrose's writings are extensive. He wrote a Hexaemeron on the six days of creation, preached on the Old Testament patriarchs (sermons that St. Augustine probably heard), and wrote on the Gospel of Luke, making use of Origen's writings. His double set of post-baptismal catecheses, On the Mysteries and On the Sacraments, treat baptism, confirmation, and the Eucharist and have a clear doctrine of Eucharistic change. Ambrose also disputed with Symmachus over the Altar of Victory in the Roman senate. He fostered monasticism for men and women, and wrote several works on virginity. He also composed hymns in what came to be called "Ambrosian meter," eight-syllable lines with four lines to a stanza, which became the most popular form for Christian hymns. Ambrose died on 4 April 397.
Aphraates, "the Sage" (died after 345), is the oldest of the Syrian-Christian writers in the kingdom of the Persians. He lived as an ascetic. Aphraates composed twenty-three treatises in Syriac (a Semitic language close to Aramaic). The treatises deal with virtues like love, humility, or penance; practices like prayer, fasting, and asceticism; and doctrinal themes like the Resurrection, Easter, and the Messiah as the Son of God. Unlike the Greek Fathers, Aphraates lived in a world that knew little of Greek philosophy or Greek Christian theology; his theology, which is archaic, has the Jewish world of the rabbis as its background.
St. Athanasius of Alexandria (ca. 295-373), more than any other Father of the Church, is a dramatic and romantic hero of early Christianity. Born in Alexandria, he was the deacon of Bishop Alexander of Alexandria at the Council of Nicea (325) and succeeded Alexander as bishop in 328. Athanasius was a staunch opponent of Arianism; he suffered exile five times, spending seventeen of his forty-five years as bishop away from Alexandria. His opposition to Arianism, as he understood it, led him to an intense dislike of the emperor Constantius, and Constantius tried more than once to eliminate Athanasius from his position. Much of Athanasius's writing was done during his exiles. His early work, On the Incarnation of the Word, is one of the most frequently read patristic works. His three Orations against the Arians are a thorough refutation of Arianism, especially on scriptural grounds. In the decade before Constantius's death in 361, Athanasius wrote a series of increasingly pointed pamphlets defending his own position, and that of the Council of Nicea, against the majority of the eastern hierarchy. One of Athanasius's most popular works was his Life of St. Antony, whom Athanasius portrays as the archetypal monk. Athanasius wrote it the year after Antony died (355), and it was soon translated twice into Latin. Athanasius's theology is plain and straightforward, rooted in the Scriptures, without the rhetorical skill and flourishes later employed, for example, by the three Cappadocian Fathers.
St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) is the most famous and most influential of the western Fathers of the Church, and perhaps the most important theologian in the history of the Church. His life, especially his inner life, is known from his work, the Confessions. He was born to a pagan father and a Catholic mother in Tagaste in North Africa. He received a superb education but, in the course of it, left the Christian church for Manicheism and also became the father of a son, Adeodatus. Through the influence of St. Ambrose and a circle of Christian Neoplatonists in Milan he returned to Catholicism and was baptized by St. Ambrose in April of 387. His mother, St. Monica, died the following year in Ostia. After returning to Africa, Augustine was - reluctantly - ordained a priest in 391 and a bishop in 395. Besides the Confessions, his best-known works are On the Trinity and the City of God. In all, about 127 of his works survive, along with more than 300 letters and 60o sermons. Among his most important contributions to theology are the psychological model of the Trinity (which led him to affirm the Filioque, or procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son), the doctrine of original sin, an emphasis on grace without denying free choice, and his teaching on predestination. At least until the thirteenth century, western theology was simply an interpretation of Augustine; and both the Reformation (Luther and Calvin) and Jansenism represent revivals of Augustinianism.
St. Basil the Great of Caesarea (ca. 329/30-ca. 379) was born into a wellto-do family in Cappadocia, in central Asia Minor. His sister, St. Macrina the Younger, influenced Basil; Basil, in turn, played an important role in the life of his younger brother, St. Gregory of Nyssa. Basil received a superb education. At Constantinople he studied with the famous pagan rhetorician Libanius; later, at Athens, he became fast friends with Gregory Nazianzus. After returning home to Caesarea, Basil taught briefly but then turned to the ascetical life. He was baptized and then withdrew to a life of solitude. He also made a pilgrimage to the great monastic centers in Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and elsewhere. Basil was ordained a priest ca. 364, and in 37o he was elected bishop of his native city, Caesarea. He reorganized the church in Cappadocia and began to work in defense of Nicene orthodoxy. Basil's literary remains are extensive. Well over 300 letters attest to Basil's wide-ranging activities on behalf of the Church and of many individuals. Among his theological writings, the short work On the Holy Spirit was the first book ever written on the third Person of the Blessed Trinity. Basil's nine homilies on the six days of creation, the Hexaemeron, are valued for their beauty and their appreciation of nature. Basil defended the cause of Nicene orthodoxy in his polemical work against a neo-Arian in the books Against Eunomius. The short work addressed to young men on deriving profit from studying pagan literature has served as a sort of charter of Christian education. Basil is also known as a founder of asceticism: two works, the Longer Rules and the Shorter Rules, remain an important basis for the monastic traditions of the Eastern church. A collection of forty-six homilies attests to Basil's skill as a preacher. Basil's personality was active, even aggressive, and as a result he alienated some of his friends. Still, Basil is honored as one of the three great teachers of the Eastern church.
St. Chromatius of Aquileia (335/40-407), the bishop of Aquileia from 387 to 407, is known as a friend of Jerome and of Rufinus of Aquileia; he also corresponded with Ambrose of Milan and interceded with the emperor on behalf of John Chrysostom. Otherwise little is known of him. Most of Chromatius's works were recovered only in modern times. He is the author of tractates on the Gospel of Mathew, of which sixty-one survive, as well as forty-five homilies, a Sermon on the Eight Beatitudes, and an Explanation of the Lord's Prayer.
Clement of Alexandria (died ca. 215) was born in Athens, probably of pagan parents. After extensive travels and his conversion to Christianity, he settled in Alexandria in Egypt where he served as an independent Christian teacher. A large body of Clement's writings survives in Greek: the Exhortation to the Greeks, an invitation to Christian faith; Christ the Teacher in three books, on how one lives as a Christian; the Stromata or Miscellanies in seven books, a collection of essays on many topics; and Who Is the Rich Man Who Is Saved? on Jesus' gospel saying about selling all one's possessions. Of all the Fathers, Clement more than any other saw the value of secular culture, and he taught a double source of revelation: the Law for the Jews and philosophy for the Gentiles. Some readers find Clement's writings appealing, while others find them hard to penetrate.
St. Clement of Rome was the third successor of St. Peter as bishop of Rome. A letter addressed by the church at Rome to the church at Corinth is traditionally attributed to St. Clement and called the First Letter of Clem ent. It was probably written in the year 96, which would make it the oldest surviving Christian document outside the New Testament. The occasion of the letter was a disturbance in the church at Corinth: some younger members had rebelled against the presbyters or elders there and removed them from office. Clement encourages the restoration of order in Corinth and the return of the presbyters to their rightful place. First Clement is the oldest witness to a persecution under the emperor Nero and to the martyrdom of the apostles Peter and Paul in Rome. The letter is also important for the history of hierarchical orders in the Church.
St. Cyprian (died 258) was born between 20o and 210 in Carthage. In 246 he converted to Christianity and soon after (in 248/49) was elected bishop of Carthage. During the persecution of Decius (250), Cyprian went into hiding outside the city. When the persecution ended, a dispute arose about readmitting to the Church those who in some way had apostatized. The dispute resulted in a minor schism in North Africa; Cyprian defended the bishop's right to control membership in the Church. Cyprian took a rigorist position on baptism, holding that baptism by heretics was invalid, and thus, heretics who entered the Catholic Church had to be rebaptized. Cyprian's writings are generally more practical and pastoral than theoretical. One of his best known books is On the Unity of the Church. The book exists in two editions: one seems to favor the primacy of Rome, the other the collegiality of bishops. Cyprian probably wrote both of them, changing his original text after a dispute with Stephen of Rome. In the second general persecution, under the emperor Valerian, Cyprian was arrested, tried, condemned, and beheaded on September 14, 258.
St. Cyril of Alexandria (died 444) was the nephew of the patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria and succeeded Theophilus as patriarch in 412. Early in his time in office the pagan woman-philosopher Hypatia was brutally murdered, although Cyril was not involved in the murder. In 431 he traveled to the Council of Ephesus and played a key role there in the condemnation of Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople. The largest part of his writings deals with Scripture, but his letters and treatises against Nestorius are the ones most often read. He wrote two wide-ranging books on the Pentateuch (On Adoration and Worship in Spirit and in Truth, and Glaphyra or Elegant Comments), in which he defends Christian, spiritual worship, using categories from St. John's Gospel and the Epistle to the Hebrews. A commentary on John and homilies on Luke are also extant. He also wrote works on the Trinity, which depend heavily on Athanasius. Among his anti-Nestorian works, three letters to Nestorius, written at the time of the Council of Ephesus, are crucially important; the Second Letter was given canonical status at the Council of Chalcedon. A late work, On the Unity of Christ, is the most balanced of his Christological works. In Christology, Cyril stressed the unity of Christ's person, for reasons of soteriology, and wrote readily of the "one nature" of Christ. But in 433, when he was reconciled with the patriarch John of Antioch, he also admitted the orthodoxy of the phrase "two natures" in Christ.
St. Cyril of Jerusalem (died 386) was ordained bishop of Jerusalem in 348. In his forty-eight years as bishop, he was deposed and exiled three times, the third time for eleven years. The cause was his loyalty to the Council of Nicea. Yet Cyril outlived his enemies and took part in the Council of Constantinople in 381. Cyril is most famous for twenty-four catecheses, delivered in 348 (with a few perhaps later). After an introductory lecture, eighteen of the catecheses explain the creed (Cyril interprets the baptismal creed of Jerusalem for his hearers) in simple but convincing terms. The last five are called the Mystagogical Catecheses: lectures on the sacraments of initiation given to the newly baptized during the week after Easter. Two are on baptism, one on chrismation or confirmation, and two on the Eucharist. Cyril holds a clear doctrine of Eucharistic change in the elements and hence of the Real Presence. He also presents a clear description of the rite of the Eucharist as celebrated in Jerusalem in his time.
St. Ephrem (ca. 306-373) was born in Nisibis, probably into a Christian family. He left Nisibis after the Persians conquered it in 363 and ended his life in Edessa, within the Roman Empire. Ephrem functioned as a teacher and held the order of deacon till the end of his life. Ephrem is the classical writer of the Syrian church. Much of what Ephrem wrote was in verse; his sermons, for example (called memre) are built of seven-syllable lines. Besides exegetical and dogmatic or polemical writings, Ephrem is famous for hymns: on the Nativity of Christ, on Easter, and on various saints. Like Aphraates, Ephrem had little knowledge of Greek Christian theology and of the controversies that raged in the fourth century.
Eusebius of Caesarea (died 339) was born ca. 263 in Palestine, perhaps in Caesarea. He began to work in the library left there by Origen. When persecution broke out in 303, Eusebius fled to Tyre and Egypt. He may have been ordained bishop of Caesarea as early as 313. Eusebius was the most learned and scholarly Christian of his day. He wrote, and later expanded, his Ecclesiastical History, which preserved invaluable information about the first three centuries of Christianity. He also composed a set of reference works for the study of the Bible and two apologetic works, the Preparation for the Gospel and the Demonstration of the Gospel. A short crisis in his life came before the Council of Nicea, when Eusebius was briefly excommunicated on the suspicion of Arianism; but he was soon rehabilitated. He eventually became a leader of a theological tradition that, while not Arian, was skeptical of the theological tendencies of Marcellus of Ancyra and Athanasius of Alexandria. Eusebius also saw in the emperor Constantine a providential leader of a Christian empire and delivered or wrote several panegyrics of Constantine.
St. Eusebius of Vercelli (died ca. 371) was bishop in northern Italy. He took part in the Synod of Milan in 355, at which the western bishops were expected by the emperor Constantius to condemn Athanasius. Eusebius refused to sign the document and hence was banished to the East. Three of his letters survive. Eusebius was also known for his efforts to have his clergy lead common life - that is, he began to require some monastic observances of his clergy. A letter from St. Ambrose of Milan to the church at Vercelli, written after Eusebius died and the church in Vercelli was preparing to elect a new bishop, attests to Eusebius's innovation for his clergy. Ambrose wanted the church at Vercelli to continue the practice that Eusebius introduced.
St. Gregory Nazianzus (ca. 326-ca. 390) was one of three children of the bishop of the same name. He studied in Caesarea in Cappadocia, Alexandria, and finally in Athens, where he met Basil of Caesarea and became fast friends with him. Upon returning to Cappadocia, Gregory first spent some time in ascetical retirement. He then joined Basil, and together they edited an anthology of Origen's writings, the Philocalia. Thereafter, Gregory was baptized and later ordained a priest against his will by his father. He reacted to his ordination by fleeing from Nazianzus; when he returned, he explained his actions in an oration, On His Flight, which is one of the first treatises on the priesthood. He lived a secluded life in Nazianzus, serving his father as a priest, until Basil appointed him bishop of an obscure town, Sasima. Gregory allowed himself to be ordained a bishop but then never went to Sasima; again, he had to explain his actions. Perhaps the high point of his life was his election as bishop of the small Nicene community in Constantinople. There, he took over a small chapel, called the Anastasia, where he preached a famous course of sermons known as the Five Theological Orations. At the time, Constantinople was almost wholly Arian. The Nicene-minded emperor Theodosius, however, was determined to bring the capital back to Nicene orthodoxy. In 381 a council was convoked for Constantinople, and Gregory was elected its president. But Gregory was unable to resolve the schism that divided Antioch, and after a few weeks he resigned the office, left the council, and returned to his home. Gregory spent the last ten years of his life writing poetry, including a famous autobiographical poem, On His Own Life. This complex and introverted personality was also one of the great Greek stylists and orators of his day; his distinct gifts are only recently being appreciated more fully. His works are, principally, a collection of orations, and the body of his poetry, as well as an extensive collection of letters. Among the orations, some of the best known are funeral orations: for his father, for his brother Caesarius, for his sister Gorgonia, and particularly for St. Basil the Great. He also delivered a famous oration On the Great Athanasius. The Five Theological Orations became a textbook of theology in the Byzantine Middle Ages and were extensively annotated. He also delivered sermons on great liturgical feasts: Easter, Pentecost, the Epiphany, and Christmas (the first Greek sermon on Christmas). Rufinus of Aquileia translated nine of his sermons into Latin, and St. Augustine made use of them. Gregory remains an enigmatic character, overshadowed in some ways by the two brothers, Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa; but his influence on the formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity was decisive, and some have come to appreciate the beauty of his poetry.
St. Gregory of Nyssa (335/40-ca. 394) was the younger brother of St. Basil of Caesarea, whom Gregory honored as his father and teacher. Of the three so-called "Cappadocian Fathers" (a term in use only since the nineteenth century) - Basil of Caesarea, Gregory Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa - the last was the only one who married. Ca. 371/72, Basil made Gregory the bishop of Nyssa to strengthen the position of the Nicene Catholics. Gregory suffered a brief deposition ca. 375, but resumed his see in 378. Gregory is the most profound theologian of this renowned group and perhaps the closest to a mystic that the early Church knew. His writings have been edited carefully in the twentieth century, partly by classicists who admired his Greek style. Among his best-known works is the Great Catechetical Oration, an attempt to explain the coherence and truth of the Christian proclamation based on reason rather than the authority of Scripture. His Life of Moses, a treatise on mysticism, was made famous by the great patristics scholar Jean Danielou. Gregory is also appreciated for a letter he wrote (transmitted under Basil's name) on the distinction between two nouns, ousia and hypostasis, words that name what is one in God and what is three. Like his elder brother Basil, he also wrote a long treatise Against Eunomius, refuting this eloquent neo-Arian. Gregory marks the beginning of the Christological controversy with works against Apollinarius, who denied the full humanity of Christ. Finally, among many other writings, Gregory composed a short book On the Creation of Man to complete and round out his brother's work on the six days of creation. Gregory of Nyssa is the Greek father who, in more ways than one, comes closest to Augustine of Hippo, both in depth of thought and in the breadth of his writings.
St. Hilary of Poitiers (ca. 315-367) was born into a distinguished pagan family in Gaul. After his conversion and baptism, he was elected bishop of his city ca. 350. He organized the Gallic hierarchy to resist the Arianizers, and for that reason was banished to the East by the emperor Constantius in 356. He spent three years in Asia Minor, where he learned of Greek Trinitarian thought and speculation and wrote his best-known work, On the Trinity (which is the only patristic source that St. Augustine names in his own work On the Trinity). By 360 Hilary was allowed to return to Gaul. Hilary was perhaps the first significant exegete and theologian of the Latin West. He wrote a Commentary on Matthew and Tractates on the Psalms; only part of the latter work survives. Besides On the Trinity, Hilary wrote several historical and polemical works against Arianism.
St. Ignatius of Antioch was the bishop of that city. Around the year 11o he was arrested, tried, and condemned to death by being thrown to wild beasts. As he was being taken to Rome as a prisoner, he wrote letters at two stopping places in Asia Minor: four in Smyrna and three in Troas. From Smyrna he wrote to the churches in Ephesus, Magnesia, and Tralles, who had sent delegates to greet him. He also wrote ahead to the church at Rome, asking the Roman Christians not to try to prevent his martyrdom. From Troas he wrote to the churches at Philadelphia and Smyrna, and also to Polycarp, the young bishop of Smyrna. Ignatius's letters are especially important for his teaching on the Eucharist and for his understanding of the offices of bishop, presbyter, and deacon in the Church. He is also the first Christian writer to use the phrase "catholic church."
St. Irenaeus of Lyons (died ca. 200) was the first theologian of the Christian Church after the New Testament. He was a native of Asia Minor, where he had heard the teaching of St. Polycarp. Probably by 170 he was a presbyter in Vienne and Lyons in Gaul, in a Greek-speaking community there. After the bishop Pothinus died in prison (177/78), Irenaeus was elected to succeed him. Irenaeus's great work, in five books, was the Refutation and Overthrow of the Falsely-Named Gnosis, more often called Against the Heresies. Irenaeus set out to refute the Gnostic heresy, but he also established a great theological vision: Adam and Christ are two focal points of a great historical panorama. Creation is not separated from Redemption, and history is the vehicle by which Christianity is to be understood. Irenaeus is the first Christian writer to cite New Testament books more (twice as often) than the Old Testament. He also wrote a shorter work, Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, a compact explication of the Christian faith.
St. Jerome (ca. 347-419/20) was born in Stridon in Dalmatia in a well-to-do Christian family. He was educated at Rome; the famous grammarian Donatus was among his teachers, and Rufinus of Aquileia was his friend. Later in life he expressed regret over the life he led in Rome. In 373 he left for the East. He learned Greek well and was able to follow lectures by Apollinarius of Laodicea, Gregory Nazianzus, and later Didymus the Blind. For three years he lived as a hermit in the desert of Chalcis (near Antioch); during this time he also learned Hebrew from a monk who was a converted Jew. Tradition named him the vir trilinguis or "man of three languages," although he knew more than three. From 382 to 385 Jerome served as secretary to Pope Damasus. The greatest work of his life began at Damasus's request: that is, Damasus asked Jerome to revise the Latin text of the Bible, beginning with the Gospels. Eventually, Jerome prepared a new translation of most of the Old Testament from Hebrew and revised much of the New Testament. Translation from Hebrew was an innovation; the so-called Old Latin translation had been made from the Septuagint. Jerome's translation was later called the Vulgate. While at Rome Jerome also became the leader of a group of ascetic women. In 385 Jerome left Rome abruptly and returned to the East, never to see Rome or the West again. Jerome's literary output was enormous. Besides the translation of the Bible, he translated many other works from Greek into Latin: some of Origen's writings, Eusebius's Chronicle, and Didymus the Blind's book On the Holy Spirit. He wrote many commentaries on books of the Bible, some of them heavily dependent on Origen. Jerome was also a polemicist and wrote works attacking those whose teaching he rejected. His fiercest controversy was against Origen and the Origenists: ca. 40o he turned on Origen and his disciples, and one result was a terrible rupture of the friendship between Jerome and Rufinus. Jerome also had an extensive, if somewhat contentious, correspondence with St. Augustine. Jerome is honored as one of the four Doctors of the Western Church.
St. John Chrysostom (344/54-407) was born in Antioch in Syria. His father died when he was an infant, and his mother Anthusa raised him. He studied with the most famous rhetorician of the day, Libanius. Baptized as a young adult, John undertook an ascetical life for several years, some of them in the desert near Antioch. He returned to the city and was ordained a deacon (381) and then a priest (386). From 386 to 397 he preached in the cathedral at Antioch, perhaps the most satisfying and happiest years of his life. There he delivered courses of sermons on books of the Bible. In 397 he was taken, almost by force, to Constantinople, ordained bishop, and made patriarch of the capital city. He lived ascetically and showed deep concern for the poor and the sick. But his style of life offended some powerful people, including the Empress Eudoxia. Theophilus, the patriarch of Alexandria, was also among his enemies; and in 403 Theophilus presided at a synod (called the Synod of the Oak) near Constantinople that deposed John. John was banished twice, the first time for only a short while; but during the second exile he died (on September 14, 407) while being forced to travel in harsh weather. John is known for a large corpus of homilies, most of them on the Scripture, but also a powerful series of homilies On the Statues, preached after a riot that the emperor considered treasonous. Among his best-known and most-read works are the six books On the Priesthood. John's preaching is sober, with little allegory but a strong sense of moral teaching.
St. Justin, Philosopher and Martyr (died ca. 165), was born into a pagan family in Palestine. In his desire to find the truth, he made his intellectual way through several schools of philosophy but found none of them satisfying until he learned of Platonism. A mysterious old man then told him to take one step further and go to the Christians, and Justin accepted Christianity as the true philosophy. He then opened a school in Rome where, as an independent lay teacher, he taught the Christian way to anyone who came to him. His most important extant writings are the First Apology, the best of the second-century attempts to explain Christianity to those outside the faith, and the Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, the reconstruction of a conversation that Justin had, after his conversion, with an educated Jew, perhaps in Ephesus. Justin's descriptions of baptism and of the Sunday Eucharist in the First Apology are rightly famous. Justin was beheaded in Rome as a Christian, probably in 165.
St. Maximus of Turin (died between 408 and 423) was a bishop in northern Italy (he may have been the first bishop of Turin). His sermons, one hundred of which are extant, treat passages from the Scriptures, but also liturgical feasts and feasts of saints. He opposed the elements of paganism that survived and offered consolation in times of trial. His sermons proved to be enduringly popular.
Origen of Alexandria (ca. 185-253/54) was born into a Christian family in Alexandria, where his father Leonides was a catechist. In 202 Leonides was martyred for the faith, and Origen had to support his mother and six brothers and sisters, which he did by teaching. He later devoted himself to an ascetical life and to an intense study of the Bible. He lived at Alexandria until about 230, when a disagreement with the bishop there caused him to move, with his extensive library, to Caesarea in Palestine. He died in 253/54, having suffered torture for the Christian faith a few years earlier. Origen was the first Christian scholar of the Bible. He prepared a great copy of the whole Old Testament written six times in six columns, with the Hebrew original and several (Jewish) Greek translations, for purposes of textual comparison and criticism. He wrote commentaries on many books of the Bible and preached homilies on much of the Bible, too. Origen's influence on the Christian interpretation of the Scriptures cannot be overestimated. He also wrote a great apology against the pagan Celsus, and shorter works such as On Martyrdom and On Prayer. The Fifth Ecumenical Council, Constantinople II in 553, condemned Origen as a heretic, and, as a consequence, many of his writings were destroyed or lost. Yet some of his work survives in Greek and much more in Latin. The twentieth century saw a great revival of interest in Origen.
St. Paulinus of Nola (353-431) was born in Bordeaux into a wealthy family. In Bordeaux he studied with the famous poet Ausonius. In 379 he served as governor of Campania and became devoted to St. Felix at his shrine in Nola. He married a Spanish woman, Therasia, and she bore their son; but the infant lived only ten days. The couple were then converted to the ascetical way. Paulinus's conversion to asceticism caused a sensation in Rome and elsewhere, as a letter by St. Ambrose attests. Paulinus was baptized in 390, and he and Therasia began to sell off their property. In 395 he was ordained a priest; the couple then withdrew to Nola, where they built a double monastery (one for men and one for women). Nola became a center of pilgrimage, especially for the feast of St. Felix on January 14. Paulinus was a poet; his verse-letters to Ausonius are both touching and painful, as he rejects the ways of his old teacher in favor of Christ. Each year Paulinus wrote a poem for Felix's feast day. He also wrote other poems in classical genres: an epithalamium or wedding-song for Julian of Eclanum (later a bitter enemy of Augustine), a propempticon or song for a journey dedicated to Nicetas of Remesiana, and a poem of consolation for a couple whose child had died. About fifty of Paulinus's letters also survive. He corresponded with Augustine, Jerome, Sulpicius Severus, and others. While he was hardly a theologian, Paulinus's writings are valuable witnesses to church architecture and to popular piety in the early fifth century.
Tertullian (ca. 16o-after 220) was born in Carthage in North Africa. He was educated in rhetoric and law, and he mastered the Greek language. Ca. 195 he returned to Africa from Rome; by that time he had become a Christian. In Africa, he began to write Christian tracts, first in Greek, but mostly in Latin. Tertullian was the first Christian to write extensively in Latin, and he shaped the vocabulary of Christian Latin. Tertullian was a polemicist rather than a gentle persuader; sarcasm and ridicule were among his weapons. He wrote apologetic works, dogmatic treatises, and ascetical tracts. He was a married man and addressed several works to his wife. Among his best works are the Apology, a skilled account of the reasonableness of Christianity; Against Marcion, an extended refutation of the secondcentury heretic; and On the Prescription of Heretics, which invokes a legal maneuver - in Roman law, praescriptio prevented a plaintiff from beginning a trial. In the case of heretics, Tertullian argued that heretics had no right to appeal to the Bible. Tertullian was unbending in his views, and in 207 he left the Catholic Church, on the grounds that it was too lax, and joined the ascetical and apocalyptic Montanist sect. Although he died outside the Church, his writings remained influential, and St. Cyprian read his works eagerly.
Works of the Fathers of the church
in English Translation
Some writings of the Fathers of the Church have been translated into English many times (for example, St. Augustine's Confessions). Others have never been translated. Below are listed translations into English, when they are available, of works that Pope Benedict mentions in his thirty-six catecheses. Not every translation is listed here; the ones included are those that are more easily accessible, either because they are in print or because better libraries would hold them.
Translations made in Great Britain in the earlier nineteenth century were edited and reprinted in the United States in the late nineteenth century, in two sets: Ante-Nicene Fathers (ANF) and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (NPNF). The former set comprises ten volumes, the latter twentyeight volumes in two series. These volumes have often been reprinted, and the texts are available on-line; they are indicated below simply with the abbreviation of the series, the volume number, and the page range. Some of the translations in these series are still valuable, but others have been superseded by more recent translations.
Ambrose. Letters. Trans. Mary Melchior Beyenka. FOTC 26. New York: Fathers of the Church, 1954.
. The Mysteries; The Sacraments. In Ambrose, Theological and Dogmatic Works. Trans. Roy J. Deferrari. FOTC 44. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1963.
Athanasius. The Life of Antony. Trans. Robert C. Gregg. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 20o6.
The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus. Trans. Robert C. Gregg. CWS. New York: Paulist, 1980.
Life of St. Anthony. Trans. Mary Emily Keenan. In Early Christian Biographies. FOTC 15. New York: Fathers of the Church, 1952.
The Life of Saint Antony. Trans. Robert T. Meyer. ACW io. Westminster, MD: Newman, 1950.
. On the Incarnation. With an Introduction by C. S. Lewis. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1982.
Augustine. Against the Academics. Trans. John J. O'Meara. ACW 12. New York: Newman, 1951.
The City of God against the Pagans. Trans. R. W. Dyson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Concerning the City of God against the Pagans. Trans. Henry Bettenson. New York: Penguin, 1972.
Confessions. Trans. Maria Boulding. WSA I/1. Hyde Park, NY: New City, 1997.
Confessions. Trans. Henry Chadwick. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Confessions. Trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin. New York: Penguin, 1961.
The Confessions of St. Augustine. Trans. John K. Ryan. Garden City, NY: Image, 1960.
Expositions of the Psalms. Trans. Maria Boulding. 6 vols. WSA III/ 15-20. Hyde Park, NY: New City, 2000-2004.
The First Catechetical Instruction. Trans. Joseph P. Christopher. ACW 2. New York: Newman, 1946.
Letters. Trans. Wilfrid Parsons. 5 vols. FOTC 12, 18, 20, 30, 32. New York: Fathers of the Church, 1951-56.
Letters. Trans. Roland Teske. 4 vols. WSA II/1, 2, 3, 4. Hyde Park, NY: New City, 2001-5.
The Lord's Sermon on the Mount. Trans. John J. Jepson. ACW 5. New York: Newman, 1948.
Of True Religion. In Augustine: Earlier Writings. Trans. John H. S. Burleigh. LCC. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1953.
On the Psalms. Trans. Scholastica Hebgin and Felicitas Corrigan. 2 vols. ACW 29, 30. New York: Newman, 1960-61. (On Psalms 1-37.)
Retractations. Trans. Mary Inez Bogan. FOTC 6o. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1968.
. Tractates on the Gospel of John; Tractates on the First Epistle of John. Trans. John W. Rettig. 5 vols. FOTC 78, 79, 88, 90, 92. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1988-95.
The Trinity. Trans. Edmund Hill. WSA I/5. Brooklyn, NY: New City, 1991.
The Trinity. Trans. Stephen McKenna. FOTC 45. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1963.
Basil of Caesarea. The Letters. Trans. Roy J. Deferrari. 4 vols. LCL. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926-34.
Letters. Trans. Agnes Clare Way. 2 vols. FOTC 13, 28. New York: Fathers of the Church, 1951, 1955.
The Long Rules. In Ascetical Works. Trans. M. Monica Wagner. FOTC 9. New York: Fathers of the Church, 1950.
On Baptism. In Ascetical Works. Trans. M. Monica Wagner. FOTC 9. New York: Fathers of the Church, 1950.
On the Holy Spirit. Trans. David Anderson. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1980.
On the Psalms. In Saint Basil: Exegetic Homilies. Trans. Agnes Clare Way. FOTC 46. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1963.
. To Young Men, on How They Might Derive Profit from Pagan Literature. Trans. Roy J. Deferrari and Martin P. McGuire. In Saint Basil: The Letters, vol. 4. LCL. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934.
Clement of Alexandria. Christ the Educator. Trans. Simon P. Wood. FOTC 23. New York: Fathers of the Church, 1954.
Exhortation to the Greeks. Trans. G. W. Butterworth. LCL. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1919.
Stromata. ANF 2, 299-567.
Clement of Rome. The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians. Trans. Maxwell Staniforth. In Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers. New York: Viking Penguin, 1968.
Cyprian. De Lapsis and De Ecclesiae Catholicae Unitate. Ed. and trans. Maurice Bevenot. Oxford Early Christian Texts. Oxford: Clarendon, 1971.
The Lapsed; The Unity of the Catholic Church. Trans. Maurice Bevenot. FOTC 25. New York: Newman, 1956.
Letters. Trans. Rose Bernard Donna. FOTC 51. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1964.
The Letters of St. Cyprian of Carthage. Trans. G. W. Clarke. 4 vols. ACW 43, 44, 46, 47. New York: Paulist, 1984-89.
The Lord's Prayer. Trans. Roy J. Deferrari. In Saint Cyprian: Treatises. FOTC 36. New York: Fathers of the Church, 1958.
The Lord's Prayer: A Commentary. Trans. Edwin Bonin. Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1983.
On the Lord's Prayer. Trans. Alisdair Stewart-Sykes. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2004.
To Donatus. Trans. Roy J. Deferrari. In Saint Cyprian: Treatises. FOTC 36. New York: Fathers of the Church, 1958.
The Unity of the Church. Trans. Roy J. Deferrari. In Saint Cyprian: Treatises. FOTC 36. New York: Fathers of the Church, 1958.
Cyril of Alexandria. "Letters to Nestorius." In John McGuckin, Saint Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy: Its History, Theology, and Texts. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2004.
Cyril of Jerusalem. Works. Trans. Leo P. McCauley and Anthony A. Stephenson. FOTC 61, 64. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1969, 1970.
Eusebius. The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine. Trans. G. A. Williamson. Baltimore: Penguin, 1965.
Gregory Nazianzus. Concerning His Own Life. Trans. Denis Molaise Meehan. In Gregory of Nazianzus: Three Poems. FOTC 75. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1987.
. Faith Gives Fullness to Reasoning..- The Five Theological Orations of Gregory of Nazianzen. Trans. Lionel Wickham and Frederick W. Norris. Leiden and New York: Brill, 1991.
Funeral Orations. Trans. Leo P. McCauley et al. FOTC 22. New York: Fathers of the Church, 1953. (Contains "On St. Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea.")
"Letter to Cledonius (Epistle 101) " In John McGuckin, Saint Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy: Its History, Theology, and Texts. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2004.
Orations. NPNF 2, 7, 203-434. (Contains Oration 21, "On the Great Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria"; Oration 42, "The Last Farewell"; and Oration 43, "The Panegyric on St. Basil.")
Select Orations. Trans. Martha Vinson. FOTC 107. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2003.
The Theological Orations. Trans. Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow. In Christology of the Later Fathers, ed. Edward Roche Hardy. Philadelphia: Westminster, '954.
Gregory of Nyssa. Ascetical Works. Trans. Virginia Woods Callahan. FOTC 58. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1967. (Contains "On Virginity," "On What It Means to Call Oneself a Christian," "On Perfection," "On the Christian Mode of Life," "The Life of Saint Macrina," and "On the Soul and the Resurrection.")
. The Beatitudes. Trans. Hilda C. Graef. ACW 18. Westminster, MD: Newman, 1954.
Commentary on the Song of Songs. Trans. Casimir McCambley. Brookline, MA: Hellenic College, 1988.
From Glory to Glory: Texts from Gregory of Nyssa's Mystical Writings. Ed. Jean Danielou. Trans. Herbert Musurillo. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1995. (Includes selections from the homilies on the Song of Songs.)
Great Catechetical Oration (An Address on Religious Instruction). Trans. Cyril C. Richardson. In Christology of the Later Fathers, ed. Edward Roche Hardy. LCC. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1954.
Homilies on Ecclesiastes: An English Version with Supporting Studies. Trans. S. G. Hall. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1993.
The Life of Moses. Trans. Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson. CWS. New York: Paulist, 1978.
The Lord's Prayer. Trans. Hilda C. Graef. ACW 18. Westminster, MD: Newman, 1954.
On the Creation of Man. NPNF 2, 5, 387-427.
On Virginity. NPNF 2, 5, 343-71.
The Soul and the Resurrection. Trans. Catherine P. Roth. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1993.
Hilary of Poitiers. Homilies on the Psalms. NPNF 2, 9, 236-48.
The Trinity. Trans. Stephen McKenna. FOTC 25. New York: Fathers of the Church, 1954.
Ignatius of Antioch. The Epistles of Ignatius. Trans. Maxwell Staniforth. In Early Christian Writings: The Apostolic Fathers. New York: Viking Penguin, 1968.
Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies. ANF 1, 315-567.
Against the Heresies. Book I. Trans. Dominic J. Unger. ACW 55• New York: Paulist, 1992.
Proof of the Apostolic Preaching. Trans. Joseph P. Smith. ACW 16. Westminster, MD: Newman, 1952.
Jerome. Letters. NPNF 2, 6, 1-295.
Letters 1-22. Trans. Charles Christopher Mierow. ACW 33. New York: Newman, 1963.
John Chrysostom. Six Books on the Priesthood. Trans. Graham Neville. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1977.
Justin Martyr. The First and Second Apologies. Trans. Leslie William Barnard. ACW 56. New York: Paulist, 1997.
. The First Apology; The Second Apology; Dialogue with Trypho. Trans. Thomas B. Falls. FOTC 6. New York: Christian Heritage, 1948.
Maximus of Turin. The Sermons of St. Maximus of Turin. Trans. Boniface Ramsey. ACW 5o. New York: Newman, 1989.
Origen. Homilies on Leviticus 1-16. Trans. Gary Wayne Barkley. FOTC 83. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 199o.
Homilies on Luke; Fragments on Luke. Trans. Joseph T. Lienhard. FOTC 94. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1996.
"Letter of Origen to Gregory." In St. Gregory Thaumaturgus: Life and Works. Trans. Michael Slusser. FOTC 98. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1998.
Letter to Gregory Thaumaturgus. ANF 4, 393-94.
The Song of Songs: Commentary and Homilies. Trans. R. P. Lawson. ACW 26. New York: Newman, 1957.
Palladius. Dialogue on the Life of St. John Chrysostom. Trans. Robert T. Meyer. ACW 45. New York: Newman, 1985.
Paulinus of Milan. Life of St. Ambrose. Trans. John A. Lacy. In Early Christian Biographies. FOTC 15. New York: Fathers of the Church, 1952.
Paulinus of Nola. Letters. Trans. P. G. Walsh. 2 vols. ACW 35, 36. Westminster, MD: Newman, 1966, 1967.
. Poems. Trans. P. G. Walsh. ACW 40. Westminster, MD: Newman, 1975.
Pontius. Life of St. Cyprian. Trans. Mary Magdeleine Muller and Roy J. Deferrari. In Early Christian Biographies. FOTC 15. New York: Fathers of the Church, 1952.
Possidius. Life of St. Augustine. Trans. Mary Magdeleine Muller and Roy J. Deferrari. In Early Christian Biographies. FOTC 15. New York: Fathers of the Church, 1952.
Sozomen. Ecclesiastical History. NPNF 2, 2, 236-427.
Tertullian. Apologetical Works. Trans. Emily Joseph Daly. FOTC 10. New York: Fathers of the Church, 1950. (Contains "Apology," "The Testimony of the Soul," "To Scapula," and "On the Soul.")
. Apology; De Spectaculis. Trans. T. R. Glover. LCL. Cambridge: Harvard, 1931.
Concerning the Resurrection of the Flesh. Trans. A. Souter. London: SPCK, 1922.
On the Testimony of the Soul and On the "Prescription" of Heretics. Trans. T. H. Bindley. London and New York: SPCK, 1914.
On the Veiling of Virgins. ANF 4, 27-37.