When high school Amy complained about the lack of devotions available to her, I wish someone had given her this book. I wish someone had told her to challenge herself and not be afraid. 'Cause let's be real, even at 25 I felt intimidated and pretentious picking up a book by a church father. Imagine 15-year-old me doing it.
I say that wish because I want to encourage 15 year olds to read this book. And 25 year olds. And 85 year olds. Augustine is not as scary as he sounds. Confessions is an incredibly readable and beautiful book. It is a love letter to God.
I found this book challenging and profound; I will definitely be coming back. This is one of those books that calls for multiple re-reads.

I've read this book twice now, once in seminary in New York for myself and once in graduate school in Chicago for a class on Augustine taught by David Hassel, S.J. Eight years had intervened, so the rereading was not unpleasant.

Most of the books of the Confessions are surprisingly accessible. The jaring elements for most moderns would probably be, one, the lengthy excurses about theology in the later books; two, the callous disregard he displays towards the mother of his son (her name is never given) even after his conversion; and, three, the extreme scrupulosity displayed otherwise and the sometimes (to us) peculiar emphases of the ancient moral sense. Augustine was, in modern parlance, very neurotic. Still, he is recognizably a whole person engaged in something approaching genuine self-examination.

Contrary to some commentators, Augustine's Confessions are not the first western autobiography. About two hundred years earlier another North African, Lucius Apuleius Platonicus (aka Apuleius), wrote a semi-autobiographical religious memoir. Unlike Augustine who became a Christian bishop, his conversion was to become a priest of Isis, the Great Mother of another mystery cult. And while Augustine's work is primarily the description of the inner personal life leading to a metanoia, Apuleius' of the the outer, public life. While Augustine is dreadfully serious, Apuleius is very funny--until, in the end, he, like Augustine, gets caught up entirely in religion.

I never dreamed that one day I would finished reading a 300-page memoir written by a ancient Catholic saint. See, how many saints who lived during the first millennium have written himself a memoir?

I twice tried to read The Holy Bible (once in English and once in Tagalog) from cover to cover but failed. I just got distracted by too many details and hard-to-remember names and ancient places and I could not appreciate what were all those characters are doing. Excuses, excuses. They say that reading The Holy Bible needs the Holy Spirit to come to you so that it will be the spirit who will whisper the words to your ears so that you will understand the word of God. Maybe the spirit is still contemplating whether a sinner like me is worth his time and effort.

Until I came to this memoir. Written by a self-confessed sinner who is now considered one of the most important figures in the development of Western Christianity: Saint Augustine (latin word for church father)of Hippo (354-430)

n  n

It took me more than 4 weeks to finish this book. Not a straight read. It is impossible to do that. The memoir is like a letter of St. Augustine to God and in the letter, he is conversing and confessing. He pours out his thoughts, his doubts, his questions. Some of those are funny (based on what we all know now with the advances in science and technology). He tells Him his weaknesses, what wrongs he has done to others. His sins in thoughts, in words, in actions.

Reading it is like uttering a prayer. Read a page or two and you get that feeling that you have achieve your daily quota of prayers. St. Augustine poured his heart out in each page of his memoir. Something that is inspiring for me to ask myself those questions he threw out to God and reflect on those thoughts that he put on the pages.

There are so many quotes that I would like to capture here but if I do that, I think I will be quoting half of the book. Most of them are in long and winding sentences but this first paragraph of Book 11 is my favorite:

n  Is it possible, lord, that, since you are in eternity, you are ignorant of what I am saying to you? Or, do you see in time an event at the time it occurs? If not, then why am I recounting such a tale of things to you? Certainly not in order to acquiant you with them through me; but, instead, that through them I may stir up my own love and the love of my readers toward you, so that all may say, "Great is the lord and greatly to be praised." I have said this before and will say it again. For love of your love I do it. So also we pray - and yet truth tells us, "Your father knows want things you need before you ask him." Consequently, we lay bare our feelings before you, so that, through our confessing to you our plight and your mercies towards us, you may go on to free us altogether, as you have already begun; and so that we may cease to be wretched in ourselves and blessed in you - since you have called us to be poor in spirit, meek, mourners, hungering and athirst for righteousness, merciful and pure in heart."n

Now, I have to give The Holy Bible another try. I could not have finished this whole book and pointed that beautiful part if there was no Holy Spirit upon me.

Oh ye of little faith.