January 24, 2023

Trusting in the Goodness of God in the Difficult Moments We Cannot Understand →

Fr. Carlos Medina, OSA:

Being a disciple of Christ does not spare us from suffering or responding with difficult emotions, as Jesus himself more than once spoke of taking up one’s cross and following Him. The saints were not happy all the time. As Saint Augustine writes, “the citizens of the holy city of God, who live according to God in the pilgrimage of this life, both fear and desire, and grieve and rejoice. Because their love is rightly placed, all these affections of theirs are right.” (City of God XIV.9)

Source: Augustinian Spirituality

November 10, 2022

Review of “Commonwealth of Hope: Augustine’s Political Thought” →

Aaron Alexander Zubia in The Wall Street Journal:

In “A Commonwealth of Hope” Michael Lamb, a professor of humanities at Wake Forest University, introduces his readers to another Augustine. This Augustine was not a pessimist but a champion of hope. He encouraged his hearers to hope for the well-being of the city. And he possessed an expansive vision of Christians and non-Christians working together to improve their lives on earth. Mr. Lamb’s Augustine shares what we would call a “liberal” vision of a pluralistic society devoted to temporal peace and prosperity.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

November 10, 2022

Celebrate Augustine’s Birthday with this Ancient Birthday Cake Recipe

Augustine's Augustine's birthday is November 13, 354AD.

Monica or someone close to Augustine reportedly made him a desert similar to what we would consider a birthday cake -- full of honey, nuts, and grains.

Below find our Augustine Blog-approved recipe!

Credit for Recipe: Noël Falco Dolan and Fr. Joe Mostardi, OSA

Source: Confessions E-Book

Augustine Birthday Cake Recipe

Ingredients:

1 stick of softened butter

½ cup of white sugar

½ cup of brown sugar

¼ cup of honey

3 whole eggs

1 cup of almond flour

½ cup of corn meal

½ cup whole wheat flour

1 cup of unbleached flour or cake flour

1 tsp. of baking powder

1 tsp. of baking soda

1 cup of milk

2 tbl. of Grappa or some other Italian Liquor (I use Frangelico)

½ cup of pine nuts and walnuts – finely crushed

Steps:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Blend together butter, both sugars, honey, and eggs until creamy. (Could be done by hand since I do not believe Monica had an electric mixer!)

Sift dry ingredients together three times until well mixed and then gradually add to the butter mixture.

Add milk and Grappa.

Fold in crushed nuts and raisins.

Pour into whatever type of cake pan you desire. (An average-sized bundt pan works well for this amount of batter!)

Cook at 350 degrees for about 1 hour or until cake tester comes out dry.

Never eat without singing happy birthday to St. Augustine!

October 24, 2022

Pope Francis: Be like St. Augustine and examine the story of your life →

Courtney Mares in Catholic News Agency:

St. Augustine’s words are an invitation to “cultivate an interior life in order to find what you are looking for,” the pope observed.

Source: Catholic News Agency

October 6, 2022

United by a Common Love of God and Neighbor →

Fr. Carlos Medina, OSA in Augustinian Spirituality:

Augustine’s grand narrative of the City of God, starting from creation and stretching into the end times, provided a way for the Christians of late antiquity and early medieval times from many tribes and clans to become one people. It is the same for us today who struggle in societies where human migration allows for more diversity and more challenges of living interculturally.

Source: Augustinian Spirituality

October 5, 2022

Recommended: Augustinian Spirituality Blog→

Fr. Carlos Medina, OSA on Difficult Emotions:

Emotions such as sadness, fear, anger, or frustration are often described as a negative. Surely, in most circumstances we never wish to be sad, fearful, angry or frustrated. These emotions are, however, part of our human experience. The emotions themselves are neutral, but how we respond to them can have a positive or negative value for us. We can grow in virtue or we can grow in vice depending on how we respond to these emotions.

Source: Augustinian Spirituality

We recommend checking out this blog, run by the Augustinians of North America. Its mission is to relate Augustinian spirituality to modern-day topics and promote prayer, reflection, and dialogue through an Augustinian perspective.

September 22, 2022

Review of “The Essential Augustine” by New City Press →

R. Jared Staudt in The Catholic World Report

For those not quite that ambitious, New City Press also has provided a unique way of getting to know the great doctor of theology more personally as a preacher and correspondent with the Augustine Essentials Collection. Essential Sermons condenses 11 volumes into one, while the Essential Expositions of the Psalms draws together excerpts of his great six-volume commentary on the Psalms. Likewise, Essential Letters collects his correspondence from four volumes. These essential volumes open up an important access point into such a vast body of writing.

Source: The Catholic World Report

September 14, 2022

Find Brutal Friends →

James Mumford in Comment Magazine:

Any potential power dynamic is quashed by the fact that my friend and I both stand under the good, now revealed to be God. We are, in Augustine’s Latin, socios, “joint participants,” “associates” in a goodness external to us both. And if we believe, Augustine concludes, that God is the source of all goodness, where my friend’s good lies as well as mine, it follows that authentically other-regarding friendship will involve “referring” her to God, but not coercively—pointing not prodding, suggesting not cajoling, sharing not imposing.

Source: Comment Magazine

August 31, 2022

Baptism and the Heated Debates Over Augustine’s Development →

Ty Monroe in the Church Life Journal:

Thus the evidence marshaled here suggests that Confessions is not merely an extended reply claiming that his baptism and membership in the Church is genuine; rather, it is (among other things) also a subtle explanation as to how and why salvation must be worked out in this way. For it shows that whatever intellectual, moral, and even doctrinal progress or missteps Augustine made on his journey toward incorporation into Christ, it was the efficacy of baptism that overcame his past deficiencies in a definitive way, while also opening up for him the sacramental and ecclesial body of Christ, which would provide the ongoing remedy for his lifelong struggle with sin.

Source: Church Life Journal

August 26, 2022

Human Fundamentals: The Case for Great-Books Programs →

Zena Hitz in Commonweal Magazine

The world of learning is simply the world of humanity. It is common property, a shared home. Readers of all locations, backgrounds, and walks of life are free agents, capable of creative engagement and repurposing such culture as they find for the needs they see for themselves. “Humanity” is not a piece of essentialism, as some of its critics claim. It is an aspiration, a dream shaped by all who share it, toward which we advance piecemeal and with difficulty.

Source: Commonweal Magazine