The one who exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
I'm going to do an interesting work today, especially since we celebrate today the memorial to St. Augustine,
the great bishop of Hippo in the early church.
St. Augustine was a giant of a mind.
Of all the doctors and fathers of the church, he is the most outstanding.
Only one exception can be compared to him is St. Thomas Aquinas.
The two of them, of course, have been gifts from God to the church.
And what a wonderful gift.
We see this from yesterday.
Today, when St. Monica, we celebrated her feast day,
her whole life was one of sacrifice and prayer to win the heart of her son for Christ.
And as we saw from the gospel of yesterday, when Jesus raised the dead,
the dead son of the widow of name,
it was the same analogous to what God had done with St. Augustine.
Raising him.
From the depths of sin that he had been placed by his own philosophy
and giving him back to his mother, giving him back to the church, innocence and life.
What a wonderful gift.
What a wonderful gift to the church.
St. Augustine, of course, is certainly a great saint.
And certainly a saint for our times.
How many people today do not?
Believe in God?
How many people today question God?
And here we have the greatest mind in the church.
He has all the answers for us.
His whole life bespeaks of what he suffered himself in his questioning about life.
First, as a Manichaean, he was confused.
He saw evil in the world and thought that the world had two principles.
The first principle, that there is God, the God of goodness and then the God of matter, evil.
And he was caught up in that.
And it justified, in a way, it justified his life of sin.
He could not give up sin.
In fact, when he was praying, he said,
Lord, give me chastity.
But not yet.
Later while, he found it so difficult to give up his life of sin.
Until, one day, when he was praying in the garden of his place,
he heard the children saying,
Tole leje, tole leje, take and read.
And he wondered to himself if that was in any of the children's games that he had heard.
And he came to the conclusion that it wasn't.
Therefore, tole leje, tole leje,
was,
from the word of God.
God using the children to say those words
to wake up St. Augustine.
So take and read.
And he took and read the epistle of St. Paul.
And this was the answer to his question about his chastity.
Not in rioting and drunkenness,
not in chambering and impurities,
not in contention and envy,
but put ye on,
the Lord Jesus Christ,
and make no provision for the flesh in its concupiscences.
Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.
Put on Jesus Christ.
Only with Jesus Christ, as we see in the scriptures,
can we survive.
Only with the grace of God.
We are what we are by God's grace.
And St. Augustine said,
he found this out.
And through God's grace,
he found the true wisdom and love.
And he found it in humility.
When he was a Manichean,
his pride wouldn't allow him to humble himself.
But with God's grace,
and realizing that God gives everything,
and God is the source of all wisdom and love,
as we see in today's opening prayer,
he was able to conquer himself.
And he became the greatest,
the greatest mind that we know.
We know the famous words,
and he was sorry that he was so late with loving God.
And he said,
Too late have I loved thee,
O beauty,
so ancient and yet so new.
Too late have I loved thee,
and behold,
thou wast within me.
And I,
having wandered out of myself,
sought thee everywhere without.
I questioned the earth,
and he answered,
Not the one that thou seekest.
And all creatures of the earth
made the same reply.
I questioned the sea and its abysses,
and all the living things therein.
And they answered,
We are not thy God.
Seek above us.
And he heard from God.
God said,
he says,
God,
thou didst call and cry so loud
that my deaf ears could hear thee.
Thou didst shine so brightly
that my blind eyes could see thee.
Thy fragrance exhilarated me,
and it is after thee that I aspire.
Having tasted thee,
I hunger and thirst.
Thou hast touched me and thrilled me.
I burn to be thy peaceful rest,
when I shall be united to thee
with my whole being.
Then will my sorrows and labors cease.
Late have I loved thee.
How many people are saying that today?
How many people don't even believe in God?
Only the fool says in his heart,
there is no God.
If they went to Augustine
and to the other great doctors of the church
and fathers of the church,
they would find all the answers.
Because all the things that
the people today are suffering,
Saint Augustine went through.
He was a sinner,
a great sinner,
far from God,
because he could not give up his passions.
But through God's grace,
he was able to conquer them.
And God used these
errors of Augustine in his early life
to help him later in his life.
He was converted,
as we found out yesterday,
by the prayers of Saint Monica
and the inspiration of Saint Ambrose.
He went back to Africa,
became a priest and a bishop,
founded a religious order,
and eventually was beloved by his people.
They considered him
the most wonderful bishop.
He was so kind and considerate.
His door was always open to people.
And when the Donatists,
another heretical sect,
ravaged the Catholic Church,
they felt that the Catholic Church
was not the true church,
because it had held communion with sinners.
Only they were the true church.
We see this, how this has been,
happened in the church today,
in the history of the church.
They deny the truth of the church
and they say,
we are only the true church.
And of course,
they resorted to violence.
And this was a great thorn
in the side of Saint Augustine.
And only with the sanctity of his life
and prayer
was he able to conquer
this particular sect.
Another heresy that he had overcome
was the Pelagian heresy,
which denied original sin
and denied the need for the grace of God.
This is why Saint Augustine
is called the Doctor of Grace,
because he knew
that only with the grace of God
could he have ever been converted.
Only with God's grace.
He knew what it was
when he was the victim
of his own sins and concupiscence.
And he knew how God
has taken over his life.
Put on the Lord Jesus Christ,
he read.
And that's what we need all to do.
Put on the Lord Jesus Christ,
the source of all love and all wisdom.
This is the antidote for our age.
It always was and always will be.
And this is why our lady at Fatima told us
that we must stop offending her son.
We must get back to the grace of God.
We must live good lives.
And she gave us the Holy Rosary to pray
so we'd meditate on the mysteries
of her son's life
and see how much God
loves us.
And then we would be like Augustine.
The grace of God
would pour into our lives.
And then we would be
filled with that grace
and be a means of grace
to all those around us.
So let us pray that God
will raise up
many great saints in our times.
If ever an age needed
a Saint Augustine,
our age does.
So many youths
and so many young men and women
are lost.
It's a lost generation.
They no longer believe.
If they only would take up and read,
like Saint Augustine,
read the Scriptures,
read the great saints,
read Saint Augustine,
then they would see
the truths,
the truths of Jesus Christ,
how God is the only source
and Saint Augustine,
which says,
our hearts are restless
until they rest in thee,
O Lord.
So let us thank God
for this wonderful Saint
and ask him to raise up
other Augustines
from the many Augustines
in the world today
who are lost,
who no longer believe.
Wonderful minds that could be
great means of grace
to others
so that souls may be saved.
May the Lord bless you.
Amen.