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Shannon : Welcome to episode 39 of the Catholic Frequency Podcast. We're gonna continue our series with Sean Berube on this episode where we're talking about confessions, the seminal work from Saint Augustine. And in today's conversation, we're diving into book four.
Sean : Alright. And good evening, everyone. Hope you've all been having a lovely Wednesday, and welcome back to another talk in Augustine's confessions. Now for those of you who are new and might just be joining in for the first time, this is the fourth episode in a 13 episode or series run that Shannon and I have been doing on Augustine's Confessions. We're essentially doing a chapter by chapter read through of this work because it's Augustine's masterpiece and, well, it it really does deserve this sort of deep dive slow read through of a week by week meditation as it's one of the most influential books in the history of Western civilization to say the least.
Now again, this book is an autobiography that's detailing Augustine's life from becoming a wicked sinner who commits about every wrong in the book to a man who ultimately grows on to become a great saint. It's a grueling thirty two year long process, but it's very rich and very rewarding along the way. And the reason that we we study confessions is Augustine's writing has a universality to it. The story is very rich and it's a wonderful particular story, but at the same time it's our story that we can find ourselves in him and if we choose to do so, put ourselves in his shoes, we can not just learn from Augustine's mistakes but we can also learn what made him so great that he didn't just find God in the truth but became a saint and became one of the most influential readers, thinkers, and theologians in history. So again the subject of today's talk is book four, which is going to detail his life from ages 18 to 27.
But before we get too far into the text itself, it's probably best we do a quick mic check. Shannon, how are you doing today, my friend?
Shannon : Good evening, Sean. It's a pleasure to be here as always.
Sean : Absolutely. Absolutely. The pleasure is all mine. This space is only 10 times more more fun having a co host to read along this with and bounce ideas off with. I mean, because as fun as it is to to monologue, I'm sure everyone can like the break in me just rambling on and on.
Shannon : I don't know. It's it's kinda fun to listen to you talk about Saint Augustine because you're so excited about it. It's like, it's contagious.
Sean : That's true. That's true. Yeah. But you definitely helped bring out the best in me. But yeah.
So I don't know. What were your, initial, gut thoughts before we dive into anything too deep? What what did you take away from, week four this week or book four of the the book this week? Or what have you felt now that we're about a month into reading Augustine?
Shannon : Yeah. You know, it struck me this time was just, you know, the grief we're gonna get into and, you can really sort of relate to what he's going through in a in a different way than anything we've read before. I remember when we started this series, we did a quote from, Pope Benedict talking about the fact that even though this is sixteen, seventeen hundred years ago, that this is timeless, that it feels contemporary, that it feels like it's happening now. And so I think we've all had periods of grief in our life. And, so it was just it was just very relatable.
Sean : Yeah. No. Most definitely. I have to say one of the things I found very interesting this time around because every time in the past when I've read Augustine's Confessions, like, I'm very much a, when I'm a reader, I'm just very, like, obsessive and focused. Like, I just wanna lock in and, like, just get it all out.
So like I usually will just marathon through a book until it's done and I really like that we're doing the talks and it's giving me the discipline of chapter by chapter each week because I really, really do feel that this read through, things are starting to marinate a lot more. That I'm not just reading a chapter, but I'm thinking about it throughout the week and thinking, well, what are the main ideas that I would love to share in the talk? What are what is Augustine really trying to get here? So, again, there's something really rich, especially when you can consider that this is a autobiography of a man bearing his soul wide open for you. I I think that what makes this book especially wonderful is the slower you read and the deeper the dive, it really enriches everything.
You really get the sense of vitality and and like you see you feel his poetry even in these translations. God, I wish I could learn Latin so we can get the original tongue he was writing in. But even now, it's like you can just get this renewed sense of vivacity just from doing these deep reads and these deep talks and dialogues. It it almost feels like you're having a great rich conversation with the greatest thinker of all time, like he's a dear friend helping you. That's like I feel like I'm almost interviewing Augustine or just like sitting by, with him by the fireplace.
So it's I think this is really literature at its best in how it transforms you is when you have these slow slow read throughs where you're just spending a lot of time with a great thinker who's also a dear friend. It's that iron sharpen iron idea.
Shannon : Yeah. You you mentioned that this is one of the great books in Western civilization, one of the great books of all time. And that's amazing because I wanted to look up this statistic, and I did earlier, that in history and, of course, this is an estimate. There's no way to officially know. It's estimated there have been 200,000,000 books.
That's hard to even imagine. Right? And so this is one of the greatest of all time. So this is like a real treasure, something very valuable that something so old is that's what I think is interesting because in our culture, it's out with the old and with the new. Right?
It's it's youth, and we don't pay attention to older people or wisdom. It's it's progress, forward thinking, and they don't our culture, we don't appreciate, knowledge of our elders, certainly not in The United States. I know they do in some other cultures around the world. And so it's great to to look back because, I mean, look at this knowledge this guy had, the influence he had on on the development of Western civilization. So it's it's a great opportunity, like you say, to be doing this slowly where it's sort of weaved.
It's not like a marathon reading session as you talked about. It's sort of weaved into, you know, week after week of what's going on in our lives and carving out time to to spend time with us.
Sean : Yeah. And what's really wonderful about Augustine, as you said, is the notion that as you go back to this this elder, you get the sense and and the realization that it it's humbling in the best of senses that this is a man who really understands human nature and the meaning of life far more than than I do. Right? And it's like, well, he's hurting so much, but look at all that he knows especially as he's writing now. So my gosh, what what can he know?
If you if you talk about maybe the the arrogance of chronological chauvinism of today's day and age where we we scoff at tradition and don't learn from the past because they're all dead men, you see that there's a lot of false idols that are pushed up in modernity that says, oh, get this and you'll be happy. This sort of will to power notion that it's just the the right amount of sex or hedonism or money or so on and so forth. And when you go through Augustine's live, like, this is part of what makes it interesting is he's so miserable, but he's so successful as at least as far as matters of the world goes. Like, he, by all intents and purposes, gets a lot of women and then he as we'll we'll see today, he even gets a common law wife so he gets this he gets this sort of, you know, image of what, you know, true love could almost look like. He doesn't marry her, but, you know, he he gets the girl.
He had all the girls before. He seems to be well liked, very honorable. He has an esteemed position in society and people are always praising him for his skill and rhetoric and for performances. So this is a man who has a lot of upward social mobility too. Right?
The type of person that you would see, today today's day and age and say like, oh, this guy must be happy because he's got everything together. He's got like the picture perfect Instagram account. He's got half a million followers and he's, like, living in luxury and so on and so forth and you're getting this, like, beautiful a beautifully horrifying dichotomy of what's so aesthetically pleasing on the outside that the world loves has such a, like, corrupted rotten inside and and you do get the sense of rot inside of Augustine. But again, we talk about how these books are almost a parallel to Dante's Inferno that before Augustine can convert and meditate and ascend upwards towards God, he has to first have the dark night of the soul at really looking at the deepest wrong wrongdoings that he's done before and the deepest, you know, sins that he suffered through, like really meditate on the darkness.
Shannon : As we look back at his journey, you know, the whole time, even when he's going down the wrong path, he really is searching for truth. And we we contrast that with today where people elevate freedom above truth. People don't really want truth today. They want freedom, and they will bend truth to fit whatever it is they wanna be free to do with no consequences, with no nobody telling them what's right or wrong. And so we've certainly lost something as a society, especially after we lost the influence of classical education of elevating freedom as the highest ideal when it really should be truth.
Sean : Well, absolutely. Because, of course, classically speaking, truth led to freedom. Right? That freedom in the the more classical education sense was discern that which is virtuous and the truth will set you free. You have to act in accordance with virtue.
As, deacon Garlic always reminds us, truth is the mind conforming with reality. He would discern the logos and you act in accordance with it and this is how you flourish per Aristotle. And this is eventually the sort of ideas that will help Augustine when you get to the faith. But first it might be appropriate as we're we look into the source material of book four to do a quick little recap of where we left him off in book three which led him up to the age of 18, so really just getting out of his adolescent years. And in, book three, we see that he really ran amok with lust, that he was he really seems to have been enjoying the women of the day.
And at the time, thinking he was having a lot of fun, but in hindsight looking back and realizing how much that the these lustful, sexual trysts were causing him suffering. Like, he was really in a a lot of pain and and blind to his pain, that this is the idea of lust is it's so constrictive that it sort of divorces you from reality that you you may be either a force of destruction and causing harm to others or to yourself and you don't even realize it and at the same time you're you're clinging to the thing that's killing you, may namely this the sense of lust that keeps coming back to you like a drug addiction. But there's also a new development that we saw in book three and this new development was a a pretty noble one. It was a love of wisdom. He was reading Cicero and Cicero made him fall in love with philosophy, which is the the beginning of this idea that, well, the truth can set you free.
That, yes, pleasure's a lot of fun and sure, like, you want to enjoy yourself and your downtime, but if you learn that which is true, if you learn virtue, you'll find something that kinda gives you this inner peace that touches the soul. And we see that as he reads Cicero, Augustine feels this awakening for what he calls immortal wisdom, right? That he he's now beginning to look upwards and he wants to know that which is true. He wants to really ascend. So there's a noble sense of his spiritedness now starting to be not totally destructive.
He's no longer just trying to be great in the eyes of the world but he wants to know, well, what is the greatest truth? You know, what is the the greatest wisdom I can find? He does admittedly start to look at scripture but he gets turned off of it for a couple of reasons. One scripture on its surface at first is perhaps a little less poetical especially if you're reading the wrong books compared to, say, philosophy and he also doesn't have great educators or or mentors to guide him or or teach him the meaning. So the of course, there's many ways you can interpret the Bible and it's many books connecting together to make a cohesive whole, but Augustine who sort of just ventures into scripture by himself gets this reductive fundamentalist reading that says like, oh, this can't all just be simply literally true.
This this isn't as great as Cicero. So he discards scripture, but he does join a false religion called Manicheanism, which is about the end of book three. And we won't get too much into Manicheanism but it is a heresy and and the reason it's considered a heresy is it has a misunderstanding of the doctrine of evil whereas the the classic and the true sense is that evil runs through the heart of every man and woman and that it's your job to, you know, choose virtue, use your free will to choose good instead of evil. Augustine, he couldn't really accept God or Christianity because the problem of pain was crushing him. He says, how can there be a good God if I hurt so much and everyone else hurts so much and there's so much wrong with the world?
Manichaeism satisfies his intellect because it solves this problem of pain. It says, oh, well, there there's two gods, one that's good and one that's evil and therefore all evil does not belong to the good god but it's this external force in the material world. And what's dangerous, this is called a dualism in Manicheanism. What's dangerous about this dualism is it gives a false understanding, a misunderstanding of the nature of evil. And so for Augustine, he now begins to think, oh, I don't have any evil inside of me.
It's this external force like, oh, it's it's just the devil outside of me who's sabotaging me. And so anytime that he thinks he's doing something wrong, he thinks it's outside of him and that he's not morally culpable for his actions as that's the the the fruits of manachism. And of course, this will be a dangerous doctrine because it will blind him to the true nature of himself and as we'll now see in this book that we're discussing today, manachism will lead him to a lot of grief and a lot of suffering with no real useful ways to handle it.
Shannon : And we see a lot of people like that in in in today's world, right? And they need to dig into this wisdom And eventually, like that quote from book one, our hearts are restless until they rest in thee. So looking forward to deep diving into book four.
Sean : Absolutely. And I I suppose the first thing you can keep in mind here as far as, you you know, why this is such a dangerous heresy is the the first victim of philosophy that eventually gets baptized into Christianity is you should know yourself and to know yourself means understanding your nature and especially that means know yourself in relation to in in the Christian lens, know yourself in terms of, the the evils inside of you. Right? Like, what are your flaws? What are your your, vices or what could tempt you to go astray?
And this is part of why we have great sacraments like confession is this always helps us give an account of not just what we've done wrong, but what was tempting us and how can we improve. And so, the, the idea in the Christian tradition that is missing is this, constant sense of self examination of looking at not just where you went astray but what tempts you and how can you do better that leads to an ongoing dialogue of improvement. And if you don't have this ongoing dialogue of improvement, it's almost like a relationship. Well, the the the opposite has happened to it. You might start to spiral and you'll suffer and things will get worse.
So this is really just it's trying to set up the stakes for why manachism is putting in Augustine in such a dangerous situation is he just has no idea. He'll he's going to believe a load of lies that will have he'll have no idea how to really handle. So if you have anything else to say to that, I'm happy to toss it back to you, Shannon. Otherwise, I'm happy to start jumping into the text itself.
Shannon : Let's go forward because I'm excited to, to get into it and hear your thoughts on this. And this is so powerful this week, so I don't wanna take any more time. Let's jump in.
Sean : Yeah. Most definitely. So again, book four, this takes place from the ages of 18 to 27. And at this point, Augustine is just recently converted to Manicheanism. So at this point, he's very, you know, you could say youthful and optimistic.
He's has a lot of, social mobility in society. He, is, now beginning a career as a rhetorician, meaning he is essentially going to get paid to train, teach and train pupils how to speak, give effective dialogues, and win debates. So he's got a very well esteemed job and he's very skilled. He also takes a common law like common law wife or or concubine. Basically, it's a you could think of it almost like a common law marriage but without any legal binding restrictions.
It was a common practice in Rome back in the time that basically Augustine will have this fifteen year relationship with a concubine who he's going to deep, deeply love. It seems that there is going to be a a real sense of mutual love and loyalty with one another, but there's going to be some shortcomings and tragedies involved despite their best efforts to be good to each other. So you'll you'll find that interesting but I think the very first thing that we'll see about, Augustine writing about this age now at age 18 or 19 as a young professional is again, he has a lot of disdain for the success that he's enjoying in life. He talks about how he was pursuing the emptiness of popular glory and the applause of spectators with competition for prize poems and strife for garlands of straw in the vanity of stage shows, which is a long way to way of referring to himself, succeeding in rhetorician, acts of rhetoric. When he goes on stage and he performs these plays or gives these great speeches and everyone gives some applause, but he dislikes it because there's going to be a disconnect between his speech and virtue.
Meaning, properly oriented rhetoric as Plato will later teach him is a rhetoric that is rooted in a love for truth, virtue, and goodness. Meaning, not just win an argument, but help everyone understand, well, what is true and how can this make us better? But Augustine hates looking back at this time in his career because his chief concern was simply winning the applause of others or teaching his students how to win debates with zero regard for that which is true and that which is just. So in practice, he could have been training lawyers to help learn how to win cases that might be, you know, setting guilty people free or prosecuting innocent people, right? That there's a very dangerous game and learning rhetoric for the sake of power and domination as opposed to truth.
So there's a lack of a proper regard for the truth that even though Augustine is a great speaker and has great ambition, it's ultimately destructive to the social fabric and perhaps to himself because he's training himself to put his validation and getting applause and approval from the crowd that he needs this validation from others rather than looking to God or himself for his own virtue. And the other quick clip notes I'll add is he hates Manicheanism as well and this shows how weird the practices are that Manicheanism which teaches a dualism that says evil ex external, it says that you are essentially going to find happiness by feeding your spirit and denying the world. So he's doing these weird practices like eating dried up figs because figs were said to have this holy light that if you ingested it, it would help you become holier and it would help you begin to hate your body and have a apathetic disregard for the material reality. He he talks about how he was striving in his free time to be made clean of all this filth of his flesh and bearing food to those who were called elect and holy that in the factory of their own stomachs, it should turn into angels and deities, by whom I was to be set free.
So it's almost like his desire to, his perverted desire philosophy to know truth has gone to manachism where he now is hating his flesh and hating his body and is trying to almost deify himself. So you're seeing pride come out as well. You're you're seeing that even though this is a man who is succeeding and being very much celebrated by the world around him, he's doing a lot of weird things and a lot of things that are really about to cause him a very, very deep world of pain.
Shannon : It's so interesting. You you mentioned there that the disdain he had for his success that he can't fill that void that God has created in our hearts. Again, back to his quote, restless until it rests in thee. And again, that's something, even though this is 1,700 ago, we could probably all name 10 people that that have that, that have all the worldly success and yet are empty. They're never it's never enough.
Never enough money, never enough applause because really nothing can fill that, desire for god.
Sean : Yes. Well, that's a % spot on, and I think this is really this is where the the pain is going to start to come in and be, very helpful is Augustine, he he seems to have been largely blind to his pain throughout his teens, but now this pain is going to start coming forward to him in a, like, full reign of terror that is going to absolutely shock him and begin searching for answers. So you're you're already going to get these ideas that there's a genuine utility to of pain especially to the the wayward man who is a disregard for truth or is misaligned with truth because pain is going to shake you up and out of your sort of misdirected desires. You're going to realize that, oh, wow. The things that I thought were good that would make me happy, don't.
I think one of these, examples that comes right here at the beginning of book four, he's talking about his recently marriage, common law marriage or his new relationship with this concubine who he spends fifteen years of monogamous and loyally in love to her with even though it's not an official marriage And he's he writes right here that, with her, I learned by my own experience what a gulf there is between the restraint of the marriage covenant entered into for the sake of the children compared to my mere bargain of a lustful love where if children come, they come unwanted, though when they are born, they compel our love. So this sort of even touches on the the debate a bit today about why should I get married? Why shouldn't I just, you know, find a girlfriend or a boyfriend who I love and let's just like not get any of that legal matter involved. Let's just, you know, do everything that a husband and wife would do without any of these sacraments or legalities. And well, it it seems that this is the point.
There's a deep sacramentality to marriage that it's supposed to transform you, that there's a call that, Augustine is realizing here that the purpose of marriage is ordered to conscientiously bringing a new life into the world, to bringing in children and this is called to transform you because it shifts your reality so that it's no longer about you and all about the kids and this teaches you with a more sort of heavenly sort of love, right, agape, the willing the good of the other and that if you voluntarily take this enterprise to seek agape and will the good of your spouse and your children, well, this is the foundation of all the virtues and therefore it teaches you how to be a virtuous person and how to live a good life. But conversely, if you don't have the marital contract or the marital covenant, then it's a lustful love and it doesn't give you this transformation. It's he he says here that children in this lens could be seen as a burden because they're not planned. They're getting in the way of our selfish sexual satisfaction and satisfaction in one another's bodies and that the even though you're even if you have a genuine regard for your your your spouse or your your not your spouse but your person that you're with that you're having these sexual interests with, there's still something missing because you haven't truly gifted yourself to them and and love is a gift of self.
So there's a he's beginning to realize now that, oh, I thought sex would have made me happy and you could see like, oh, I love this woman, but he talks about just being jealous and bitter and envious all the time and he doesn't have the peace of the spirit. So you're beginning now for the first time to see the sense of disillusionment of, oh, I thought this thing would make me happy, but it turns out it didn't. So I suppose I'll I'll look elsewhere. It's the beginning of dissatisfaction.
Shannon : Yeah. The family is is the primary cell of society. Right? I did a thread today on on what the church teaches about the family and that procreation is the primary end of marriage. We're supposed to be open to life.
I think that thing you've said about compels even if you don't want the child, you're you're compelled to love it. I've heard so many people who who don't have children say how much it changed them for the better. Have it like they could never have predicted how you know, once you have someone you've brought into the world that you're responsible for, it just imbues you with a sense of responsibility and selflessness sometimes that that you didn't have before. Now that's not always the case. We see today a lot of people, you know, seek abortions and that sort of thing.
But so many people I've heard, and I'm sure you have too, Sean, talk about that that, you know, having a child, this in in some cases was the first time they became truly selfless because to be a parent, you have to be selfless a lot. Right? For a long time, it's really hard. So that's interesting what he's going through here.
Sean : Yeah. No. Most definitely. And so it it seems then that there there is also one more interesting turn here in the book, and it's really the what's going to set the standard of what really is heartache, but he name drops a good friend of his, his friend, Nabridius, who is a young man of great worth and high moral character. And so what's interesting is this is the first time that he actually drops a name, in the entire autobiography.
That up till now, everyone has been described as essentially nameless people or others. And I think what's interesting about this is this is going to change that as we get towards the later and later books, there's going to be a sense of he'll personalize more and more people and talk about, oh, I owe these people to helping me become virtuous. But it seems that he's using a very interesting literary technique here that what he's essentially attempt, pointing out is that in this life of sin, everyone is dehumanized, that his connection to others is very much compromised. And and therefore rather than having true rich relationships and connections with one another, he has these sort of, faceless names and it it it suggests that a life without love is a sort of dehumanizing reality that's less rich. Right?
You're more divorced from reality and you're not properly attached and Nabridius who's the first man who as we'll see in a second will help him find God is the first man that gives him a general sense of humanity. So it's almost like the to the extent that you begin to notice virtue and love is to the extent that you begin to, well, change and flourish and connect and restore communion with your fellow man.
Shannon : Yeah. Relationships affect us deeply. Right? You can't, even today in the modern world, it's hard to evangelize people you don't have a relationship with. And so that's that's very interesting.
And, we'll get to a little bit later, I guess, this really close close friend that he that he loses and how grief It's almost like we've talked about a and AA in the past. Right? You you sometimes you have to hit bottom before you you make that turn, so just something to call me this time.
Sean : Yeah. I mean, it's interesting because what's being set up here is he he begins to talk about these virtuous forms of friendship as well. And, it it's almost Aristotelian that even though Augustine is far more influenced by Plato, generally speaking, he he takes a lot from Aristotle here as far as talking about how friendship had led him astray and led him to great heartbreak, but also it can be used to help bring you closer to God. So Aristotle, of course, famously talks about how there are three types of friendship in life. There's friendships of utility, there's friendships of, pleasure, and there's friendships of virtue.
And of course, utility based friendships are, essentially business transactions, right? Friendships where you are you're friends with someone because you're getting something out of it or you're giving something towards one another that so long as you guys each have something to gain from one another, you know, you'll you'll be friends. But as soon as this sort of mutual gain goes away, it's like, yeah, okay. Whatever. We'll we'll move on.
And there's nothing effectively wrong with any of these, but they do have their shortcomings. The second type is, the pleasure friendship, which is a bit more of a popular, form of friendship today, right? Like it's friendship where you go and you have a lot of, just simple joy hanging out with another person, right? You have a lot of fun, you you just like maybe it's the person you see at the bar or at the gym like, oh, it's just you're always happy to see each other but there's not like a deep rooted sense of intimacy here either. And then the, third type of relationship is what Aristotle calls the virtuous relationship.
And the virtuous relationship is the relationship in which, you and another friend are united and care for each other out of a love for virtue, right, and a love and a desire to make each other better. And it seems that Augustine is really drawing on this here where he calls about the virtuous type of friendship as, to directly quote him here, the truest meaning of friendship is there is no true friendship unless you weld it between souls that cleave together through that charity which is shed in our hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given to us. So it sounds that to him the the truly virtuous friendship is the friendship in which two men are united by a love of God, right, or a love of the good and out of this love of the good, a love of a desire to, you know, see a desire for one another's well-being. And he'll talk for a second that if you genuinely desire the best in the other and they genuinely desire the best for you, then it's not that you'll necessarily overcome pain or you won't feel grief, but that you'll have the sort of friendship that can stand the test of time and also stand the the trials and tribulations of life that like when you're taken out, you'll have something to stand on and you'll you'll truly know who the other person is and through this friendship, out of the love of the good in the others and their love of the good in you, they'll help you know yourself because you'll see, why do they like me?
And they'll say, oh, I like you because you have these great qualities about you. So there's a mutual sense of self understanding and self knowledge that comes from two men who properly love the true good and beautiful in God.
Shannon : Our friend, Imperator, a while back, did a great thread on these three forms of friendship, and I'll put it in the comments. I'll link to it because it's really, really good. But, yeah, the the best that we aspire to, of course, are the friendships of virtue. I think of it as as the people who bring out the best in us. Right?
We all have friends that maybe don't bring out, maybe they bring out the worst in us. But there are I think it's a special it's not always a lot of people, but when you have those friendships where, again, that phrase you use a lot, Sean, iron sharpens iron, but really just makes you a better person. Not only do you learn from them and enjoy their company, but they actually make you more virtuous. That is, well, there you go. Virtuous friendships of virtue that we can all aspire to have.
Although, you know, it's not like you can just go down there and start one. You have to have sort of that chemistry with people and shared mutual interests and sort of discover this over time, I think, by sharing sharing conversations, you know, like we're having today and and other things.
Sean : Yeah. Well, it comes down to having properly oriented desires that if you love the right things, then then, you you'll be able to not just enjoy the good times, but you'll be able to survive the bad times. But on the other hand, if you only love sort of superficial worldly things, those are are good while everything is fun. But, again, when the storms of life come, you're not going to have much in your friendship to to stand on. These are the friendships that will, you know, come together easily, but they'll fall apart just as quickly.
Again, I like to think of the neighborhood bar friend, like, okay, it's great you guys like each other because you're always just seeing each other at the best time when you're off of work and just getting a drink and, you know, letting loose, but there's nothing very real or tangible to ground you. And so I I think it's interesting then here to look at this case of Nabridius who is the first person that Augustine would have considered a virtuous friend and he didn't have any virtuous friendships at this time because he didn't love God, but a Nabridius of course is a friend who gets deathly ill and he nearly dies And so because he's about to die, he gets baptized which was the the common practice. You get baptized on your deathbed so that you can have a a clean slate and have a very reasonable chance at going to heaven. And so, Nabridius gets baptized and then he makes a a recovery And Augustine is happy to see him and he goes to make some jokes about baptism because again, both of them aren't Christians or at least Nabridius wasn't. And Augustine's like, yeah, man, this whole, baptism stuff that was pretty, like, silly superstitious stuff.
Right? And in the Britius, he says, just all of a sudden, like, firmly rebukes him, which was like this new thing he hadn't seen before. He's like, don't take his name in vain. Like, don't just don't joke about that. Like, we're not going there.
He's like, there's this, like, seriousness form that I hadn't seen. This was my lighthearted friend who made jokes and was intelligent, and all of a sudden there was something that transpired through this baptism that he has this deep rooted reverence for the Christianity they used to make fun of. And Augustine writes how at the time he was still a bit too, you know, blinded to fully appreciate what had happened here, but it left a lasting impact, like a mark on him. He like he had this deep sense of anxiety of, is there something he's seeing that I'm missing? Is there something that I'm missing in general?
But he doesn't have too much time to reflect upon this because, of course, great tragedy overtakes him that the Viridius does end up dying, a few days later. And again, this if if you're to just read a little bit of the poetry, he he spirals here. He goes, yeah, my my heart was black with grief. My native place was a prison house and my home was a strange unhappiness. The things we had done together became sheer sheer torment without my friend.
My eyes were restless looking for him but he was not there. I hated all the places because he was not in them. And this goes on and on but there's this deep rooted sense of like melancholic agony that life has lost all of its vitality and it feels like, it almost feels like he just lost a it almost feels like he just lost a a key organ or something, right, or a limb or, like, lost a deep rooted sense of his vitality. It's like something ghastly happened to his character with the loss of his friend. And he's he says, I can't even understand it now, but he'll get to it in a second that he had an improper love and desire in this friendship that is causing him not just a normal, natural, and healthy grief, but a very deep rooted sense of loss that's unhealthy.
Shannon : It's interesting because the the baptism of his friend, you know, is is requested by his family. Right? Because the friend is so ill and, is unconscious. And so this is why Augustine, you know, is gonna make make this joke or whatever because he he he's surprised. It's very interesting because all relationships have boundaries, whether spoken or unspoken.
There there's pretty much something we can all do to end a relationship. So every relationship has a boundary, and you get the sense this is one of the first times this friend is is setting such a firm boundary about, you know, not making fun of this. And it, it does take a gust and by surprise, but out of respect for his friend, he he, you know, doesn't push it in the moment.
Sean : Yeah. And I think it also gives you a little bit of hope of look at the lasting impression you can make if you take your your faith or your love of virtue seriously. Like, even when Augustine was mired in sin, like, this still this memory still haunted him some twenty plus odd years later when he's writing the confessions. So it goes to show that, even the the simple act of just genuine reverence for your beliefs, not just that, oh, I'm a casual Christian, but like, oh, I genuinely believe this and I genuinely love this. Like, this people will feel that and that's it's going especially in today's day and age, they're that's going to touch them.
Like, wait a minute, there's something this person loves that's greater than the common, excesses, joys, and pleasures that we see in society today. Like, what is it about this, man? Like, it it'll haunt them in in a good way. Right? Like, it'll get them curious and it will get them thinking.
It will get them interested. This is why oftentimes the the best way to evangelize is just to grow in your own faith and to grow in your own love, which can sometimes mean looking at not just your vices but doubling down on your virtues. Like, what do you love about serving God? You know, what is your vocation? What does he want you to do?
That your obedience to God isn't just pleasing to him, but it starts to make you this beacon, this temple of evangelization.
Shannon : It was so relatable to hear him talking about, you know, going places that he used to be with his friend, that where they used to go and hang out and do things together. And, again, I think that's something we can all relate to when you have a whatever kind of relationship and that person is gone, they move away or they die or whatever. When you go those to those places, where you had shared experiences and quality time together, you can't help but think about what you've lost. And, yeah, I I just think that's something we we can we can all relate to. And, again, this loss ultimately, is what we're searching for God, the true, the good, and the beautiful.
Sean : Indeed. And what's what's funny here is Augustine will come to a very unique conclusion about, about his grief as well and his loss of faith. Right? That he he can continues to talk about how eventually time does kind of numb him over. Right?
It doesn't completely heal him, but it at least numbs his pain and he at least can, like, carry on with his daily life and he makes new friends. But even then he's kind of contemptuous about the nature of the friendships, not the friends themselves but the nature of their friendships. He says, you know, it was all one huge fable. It was a long lie being friends with these people, because, my my soul was still itching in my ears and it was utterly corrupted and my folly did not die whenever one of my friends died. Which is basically along the lines of, okay, I have more friends but it's still the same folly, meaning if one of them dies, there's going to be this unnatural grief, there's going to be a excessive grief of not just mourning a loss, but feelings a selfish sense of loss of, like, how can I go on, right?
Like a, there's a a an extremity of agony and grief that is again misoriented and misunderstood and not properly, not properly channeled. So he he talks about here's what happened, here's why this this grief of this friend took took me out so deeply that it felt personal to me that I felt like I died myself and why I let it divorce me further from you god and stop living altogether. He says, me and all of these wayward friends, we were all kindled by a flame which fused our souls and made many of us one. And he goes on to say that this is the root of our grief when a friend dies that many of us are one. And that the root of our grief, the blackness of our sorrow and the steeping of the heart and tears for joy has turned into bitterness.
That, he oops, lost my place here. Oh, and the feeling is that we were dead because he is dead. So because that these friendships here are friendships based off of pleasure, they're still primordially based on, well, what can I gain? Like he makes me feel so good. And he says, what's curative is if you have this virtuous based friendship that's rooted in two souls welded out out of a love for God, he says, you'll learn a proper grief because even though you will mourn their loss properly and beautifully and mourn their legacy and the the beauty and the tragedy that they're gone, you'll still have this sense of comfort in realizing that they have gone back to Providence, that they have gone back to their creator.
And so this gives you a sense of calm and clarity amongst your deep grief of knowing, okay, they're they're back in in paradise. This is good for them and so I do, I do take solace in this goodness for them even while I'm grieving. So it seems that the proper, way to express grief is this duality of both lamentation of mourning the genuine true and real loss and and the love you had for your friend but also staying grounded in God by knowing that all goes back to God and that this is also your destiny that when you have a proper idea of the eschatological end of your life and where you're going that even death itself won't completely destroy you and wreck you because you all know that, okay, the the the man upstairs is is in charge and he is true and good and therefore, even the greatest tragedies and griefs in life will not utterly wreck me because all is good and life is still good. If you don't have friendships that are built off of virtue, you won't have this, and death has the capacity to completely rock you and completely devastate you.
Shannon : You're talking about that misdirected attachment, to friends. It reminds me of the conversation we had with, with Deacon Garlic, in the space he hosted, the Christian defense of Eros. He talks about this, this misdirected, you know, we all have this passion, and we have an infinite hunger because our heart has an emptiness for God who is infinite. And therefore, a finite being, another person, can never fill that infinite sort of hole that is in our soul. So we're always gonna be unfulfilled unless we direct that channel that, you know, to the to the right place upwards, look up, to God that no no friend is ultimately gonna fulfill that need.
No no lover, nothing nothing else. Money, sex, drugs, rock and roll, nothing. Only God.
Sean : Yeah. No. I mean, that's 100% spot on. And this is really the tale of what will be consistently causing Augustine and agony over and over and over again is putting his love in the wrong places that even when he has a sense of philosophy and even when he has a sense of a religion of Manicheanism, he still is holding other things the highest. Most notoriously, it's going to be lust that we'll see later on.
But if you have these misproper loves and that which could be beautiful like sexuality properly ordered is beautiful, but if it's misdirected, it enslaves you and it will stop you from making the proper sacrifices that can help you grow and flourish as a human being. Hence, this misdirected love, like friendship is a good and beautiful thing, but in this case, Augustine has a misdirected sense of love and it completely, well, takes him out. And it's here where he has a very interesting, after he makes this conclusion of, okay, we we need to love God first and we need to have friendships rooted in the love of God, which means if we follow the golden rule, right, if we love God with all of our hearts, love our neighbors as ourselves, then all of a sudden we'll have the ability to naturally build a virtuous friendships. The next three sections of his writing after he comes to this conclusion is all just writing that's almost similar to the Psalms again. Right?
It's he he's expressing glory to God again. He it's it's funny that if you look at the footnotes, you see that this writing is essentially like references to Psalms and scripture and Psalms and scripture talking about, you know, God is great, God is glorious, God is good. And as you said, he brings up the our hearts are restless till we rest in thee. So it seems then what he's doing here is he's responding to his grief by showing you how we're meant to properly handle grief which is turn to God and look to God and offer him both praise and lamentation. Be honest about your griefs and your sufferings and your agonies in life, but also, you know, praise him, like, have a relationship with him.
And these acts of praise, these acts of singing Psalms, these acts of reading and referring to scripture, this is sanctifying because it builds a loving relationship with God. It builds the the greatest love and the highest love that properly orders all the rest of your loves. So it's the the simplest things that it's easy to overlook, but these simple duties of getting up a little earlier to read your bible or taking that time to just say your morning prayers, your evening prayers, like these little steps of just trying to draw closer to God in the day to day, it seems that Augustine is saying, this is the answer to grief and this is how grief can lead you to God that when you're suffering, don't let your suffering take you, don't let it destroy you, don't let it say life is without meaning. Let your suffering be an invitation to look up to God himself and seek God with all your heart, like search for God. And this becomes curative and transformative and conversely then the very grief that was antagonizing your soul is now sanctifying and helps you become something closer to sainthood.
Now, of course, Augustine isn't praising God in the the moment here. This is him writing in hindsight, but it's funny that these three sections of praise, it seems to be like this is the solution to deep agony and deep grief that ruins you.
Shannon : It's probably kind of a weird thing to bring up, but talking about friendship and you're talking about sort of grief and despair, you know, reminds me of Jesus and Judas. You know, Judas is this friend of Jesus who betrays him, but he then comes to regret doing it. But he doesn't repent, although he's sorry for it. He agonizes over it, but he's stuck in that despair. He never he never looks up.
He never sort of gets outside of himself and goes back to God. As we see, you know, Peter denies Christ, but on the beach, you know, he gets reaffirmed three times the same number of times he denied him. But Judas sort of gets which I think is is easy for all of us to do, just sort of so wound up in despair that we we shut God out, we don't go to God. I think that's an important lesson to remember.
Sean : I really like bringing up that, notion of Judas because I I think that's right that, you know, his suicide, that really isn't an act of penance. It's an act of self destruction because he he doesn't go to God at all. There's no apologies. It's just a, oh my gosh. I'm a sinner and let me, well, take my own life.
So it shows you that this is this seems to be the end fruits of that which is sin, vice, and a wayward life that if you let sin take you to its logical conclusion, that's death. For Judas, it was betrayal and for the likes of Augustine, it would be death via a lust and a complete turning away from God. So the end result of sin is a self destructive divorce from God, which is pretty much what hell has agreed to be, like a complete divorce and separation from God. So then this really goes back to the idea of why, you know, penance and confession is so beautiful is it's it's possible to make every mistake in the book and you don't have to let it destroy you and, there's actually a very common line of thinking that penances it helps you become virtuous because if you truly repent of your evils, now this experience of repented wisdom and and sins that you've forgiven from, they they help you form virtues. Right?
You have a more proper hatred and fear of evil and as they say, fear of God is the beginning of all wisdom. So these common, communions of God of not just praying but consistently confessing and consistently seeking improvement, this is the path of sanctification where the very things that are scourges on your soul now become your greatest blessings and boons so long as you properly repent and will seek to look better that your pain and suffering though it hurts you, it helps you look upward and when you have that proper aim and gaze, everything else will naturally change serendipitously.
Shannon : Yeah. The thing about confession is you're, you know, you're shining a light inward. You're having sort of this self awareness. It's so easy to, you know, the devil doesn't come and tempt you to go out and commit murder the first time. He tempts you very, very subtly to just sort of take one step away, one step in the wrong direction.
And over time, it's like the water wearing away the stone. You know, you get further and further away from God. And sort of that confession, even if it's sins you struggle with all the time, by going through the motions, of course, repentance has to be from the heart and not just from the head. But it's almost like Judas, you know, he knew he did wrong. That's that's good.
He was halfway there. Right? You gotta have the full picture, the heart conversion as well. But, if you continue to sin over and over and you don't go to confession, you're gonna lose that even that mental intellectual care about what's right and wrong. So it's so important to go to confession even if you feel like I'm just struggling with these same things over and over.
It's you know, you never give up and you're always trying and and grace is coming through that.
Sean : Yeah. I mean, that's the I I really do believe that as well that whether it's a a sin that you're completely, you know, struggling with and repeating or if it's even just something along the lines of, I just I don't think there's anything terrible on my mind, but I should probably just go for the sake of going. That that simple fact of, like, doing that little examination of conscience of, like, where have I gone wrong? At least for me, like, I find that that alone is very edifying. It's like, oh, actually, I guess I do have, like, a few more things to confess than I thought of.
And it's like, oh, wait a minute. Sometimes it's a surprise too, like, oh, I I think I really missed the mark here or, like, wow, there's a there there's a pattern going on here that even the the more that you're you're confessing, the more you're becoming aware of patterns that were once ruling you. And, you know, Ignatius talks about this that the thing the devil loves most is ignorance and blindness. And so the last thing he wants is people being astute and, you know, going to confessing or or going into communion with others to discuss the nature of your spirit because the minute that you have, like an increased sense of self awareness of your patterns or triggers or, you know, behavior that is is not right, all of a sudden you find out that, you know, temptation becomes far less stronger than it was before or you become much more stronger to handle it that, in time, like, effectively what I'm I'm saying here is that the the devil is much weaker than it makes you think. Like, the greatest lies when lust is in your ear making you think that it's all completely, like you got a hold on you and that it's never gonna go away and you're usually hearing these words like, oh, I can't like even if I make it through today, there's tomorrow and tomorrow and how could I ever?
How could I? You know, that's that's usually more often than not that's the enemy speaking to you and so when you go to confession, you get the voice of clarity especially from a priest who can be a great spiritual director. This gives you that sense of understanding that as soon as you recognize the patterns inside of yourself, right, what did they say, know yourself. As soon as you truly know yourself, the the forces of principalities and darkness have far less power over you and you'll probably surprise yourself just how much more you really, like, flourish in virtue. Like, wow, I was much stronger than I thought I was because you're not just fighting these battles on your own anymore.
You're going to your priest, you're going to the church, and you're going to God himself. And when he's on your side, it's like, well, who can stand against us?
Shannon : Yes. Self awareness is so is so important. So if you have a spiritual director, they're they're trying to always get you to do that inner inner look. It's the same thing if you go to, like, a mental health professional. A lot of people go to therapy.
Probably a lot less people would need to go if they were Catholic and went to confession, but it's the same sort of thing. You know, and and a therapist, you know, you might ask, why did I do that? And they'll say, well, why do you think you did that? You know, they're always sort of pointing it back at you, trying to grow your awareness of yourself and your actions, so that you can sort of see patterns over time because that's how you change it in the moment, right, when you start to do something and you sort of say, wait a minute, I did this last time and it didn't work out so well. So you start to sort of see how virtue could help your life, how prudence and temperance could could help you?
Sean : Most definitely. So with that, at at this point where we we've discussed how grief has completely rocked Augustine because he doesn't have a proper orientation of God or a proper love of truth that can help him help stabilize him in the trials and tribulations and storms of life. And again, what's really interesting here is this is the first time where it seems he's really been shaken. And historically, his biggest objection that kept him away from God and that kept him away from Christianity was the problem of pain and the problem of evil, right? He said there's no way that there can be a good God who exists who allows evil and suffering.
And he specifically went to Manichaeism because he thought, oh, okay, now I've got the problem of pain and evil solved, like this makes sense to me. It's not true that he thought it was true and it made sense, but his real big sense of humility now is, man, I've been practicing this religion for years and I I thought I was spending years growing in holiness, but the first big setback and I'm completely powerless against, well, against pain, right? The the very religion that I thought saw the problem of pain, it has no answers for me in the the storms of life. And what happens here, it's it's still gonna take some years to, fully disavow, but this is the first moment where Augustine says, maybe this Manicheanism is wrong and maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's something I don't know, right?
This this deep rooted agony, it becomes the sense of humility that will make him start asking questions, to make him start searching again. Again, this is why more often than not, desolation is often considered to be a a blessing in disguise or sometimes an outright good thing because for the wayward man, desolation is seen as the Holy Spirit trying to call you home and that for all of Augustine's years of sin, his heart is going to be on fire and in agony and his mind will be, tormented with grief. And all of this is actually, it seems to be in hindsight as Augustine recognizes it. It's god telling me you are going the wrong way. You are driving straight towards the cliff, like turn around, turn around, turn around.
So it's very hopeful that to think about, one, the fact that more often than not, you know, how do we make sense of suffering when we're going through real grief? It doesn't necessarily mean that we're wicked people, but more often than not, what God does is he allows us to be broken because we can be, per Hemingway, we can be made strong at the broken places or we can further, further lean on our reliance and our relationship to God and it's this consistent leaning and surrender that truly transforms and sanctifies. So for now, Augustine is is still going to have this this flaming heart, but it's that these blessings are not necessarily a curse for wickedness. It's an act of love of God and the Holy Spirit trying to call you call him home and it's just helpful for for us to remember that we could perhaps be going through it and even in these moments where God feels far away or we feel completely abandoned and forsaken, it's even in these very moments where he he feels furthest away that more often than not, he's actually closest and he's either offering us insights for great change or just trying to help us realize that remember, hey, like, you know, it's it's on me.
Just rest in me, and I will take care of everything.
Shannon : I think about some people that they come to, you know, their later years in life and they go through lots of suffering with their health. And many times they're in lots of pain. And even somebody that's on their way to dying might have a two or three year illness where they're progressively suffering, and there is always this why. And I think we all sort of see sometimes that can be for their own spiritual preparation, but it can also, I think, sometimes be for the preparation of those around them, that they, through witnessing this, you know, God can reach them, if not in that moment, twenty five years down the road that, I think the saints have said, you know what? Once we get to heaven, you know, all this will be clear why these things had to happen, but God works everything out to, to our good, even the even the really bad situations.
But it's that, you know, it's like Job. It's like, we wanna know why. What's what's gonna happen to God, Dana? Give me the plan. Send me a memo.
I'd like to know what's what's happening, and we wanna be in control, which is natural for our fallen nature. But, again, it's this whole thing about we cooperate cooperate with grace throughout our lifetime to the sacraments that we yield that control one decision at a time, and we'll end up in the right place.
Sean : And I love that you bring up Job because that's a great point, and, Augustine would be hammering this home in the text as well that, again, what does Job want the entire time? Like, at at first, he's just a faithful servant who's long suffering, but what he really wants is, right, he wants answers. He's like, you know, eventually, he gets fed up and he's like, you know, God, like, you know, come I'm I'm innocent. Right? Like, I don't deserve any of this.
Like, what is going on here? Like, come to me and tell me what's wrong. And, again, God shows up to him that, you know, what does he do? He doesn't really give Job answers. Right?
Instead, what he he simply does is he tells Job, like, hey. You know, did you make the the sun, the moon, and the stars? Did you make the beast of the sea and the beast of the land? No. He didn't.
And as as Job hears this and and is humbled, he seems to come around to repentance and say, you're right, god. Like, you you are good. And he he's genuinely sorry for the outburst, and he seems genuinely satisfied with god's, response. And at at first glance, this almost seems a little hard to understand. Right?
Like, okay, like, Job is innocent and he's been suffering nearly to the point of death and has had everything taken away from him and, god, you're you're scolding him? Like, I I don't what's what's going on here? But I think the the real brilliance is that it's not that and of of course, some of this is just the meditation on the the limits of human wisdom, right, that as as you pointed out, things may not make sense to us now, but they'll certainly make sense in hindsight because our sense of justice and our understanding of reality pales in comparison to gods and the divine plan. So part of this is you need a cosmic skepticism of realizing your limitations and saying, okay, like, I don't know, but I trust in you god. But I do find it interesting that Job is made happy by this response.
C. S. Lewis will touch on this later in his book till we have faces, but the idea seems to be that it's not that god will intervene in your life to give you the answers to solve your problems, but it's far more the idea that the face of god is the the presence, the being that satisfies all of your questions that you don't need more more answers of this is what you've done wrong or this is what you need to do or this is why you're hurting. It's like you just, like, you you just need to look at the face of God and then there's peace. It's like that the reminder that the being who created all universe is good and made of love and when you're in communion with them, well, yes, life is indeed good.
It's it's kind of what we practice in Eucharistic adoration too, right? Like you you come to the the Eucharist with all of your worries and concerns and you meditate and sit in the presence with God, more often than not you're going to grow closer in communion with him and you might find a sense of peace. So really the the answer to suffering isn't really give me answers, it's give me a softened heart, let me offer up my pain to God and let me seek him out, let me grow in communion with him. And this active sense of seeking, again, it's sanctifying.
Shannon : I think it's all meant to build our our you know, God wants us to trust him. Right? And so why? Because it's impossible to you can't love someone you don't trust. Right?
You you trust someone. You know, if you don't trust somebody, you're not gonna be able to love them. And so that's what a lot of, I think, our tests in life are are learning to trust God because, really, we're learning to that's what we're here on Earth for, really. It's to learn to love him and and be with him. And that's so that just to refer back to that talk, it's so beautiful how Deacon Garlic talks about this, that God has an Eros for us, that he has his burning passion for every person.
Individually, he would go die for just if one person was the only person on earth, and that's really, really kinda hard to wrap your mind around sometimes.
Sean : Indeed. It's the the well, it it really is, and I think it's always worth meditating. It's probably why we always meditate on the sorrowful mysteries too. Right? Like, the the Christ's passion and why do we we focus on the, you know, the the most grueling part of Christ's ministry so much.
It's like, well, this is specifically what he came down to earth to do. He came down to sacrifice and die for us, and that this is the ultimate act of love. Right? That no love is greater than this, that he will lay down his life for his friends. And we realized that I I think this really helps you with the emotional problem of pain and suffering of even if you can logically understand why it's better for suffering and evil to exist in this world and even if you can, you know, understand the the limits of your own understanding of justice and knowledge, it's it still doesn't always make you feel better when you're completely going through it and hurting.
But that's the the idea is when you're going through grief, you're you're very close to Christ on the cross and therefore Christ is, closer to you and he understands what you're going through because he no one suffered more than him through his passion. So when you're carrying your cross, when you're hurting, you're you're actively assuming that you're, you know, carrying your cross nobly, offering up your pain to God and striving to be virtuous despite your pain and suffering, then this is what it what means to carry your cross, that you're growing in virtue because you're doing what's right, true, good, and just specifically when it hurts and that this is surely going to at least reward you, in the salvation, divine salvation economy, if not in life as well.
Shannon : Truly. Well, let's keep plowing through, and then hopefully we'll have a little time for if anybody wants to comment as we get closer to the end here.
Guest : Yeah.
Sean : So I think what's interesting is, when we get towards the last two sections of the book, we find out that he has a brief meditation when, Augustine wrote his own book. And funny enough, he doesn't speak on what the book is about and it's probably, you know, similar to the idea of most authors, they don't like their first book anyways, so they they hope that it's forgotten about. And we don't we don't have this book today, so we don't know what it's, consisted of. But, what we do know is he talks about how who he dedicated this book to. And if I remember right, let me pull up my notes here.
He dedicated it to a man called Tyrus or Hyrius who was, apparently, he was a very beloved speaker of the day. But what Augustine says is, it's interesting. I dedicated this entire book to this man, but I knew nothing about him and I, you know, I didn't even, you know, what's the word? I hadn't read any of his books. I couldn't tell you anything about his life.
I just knew that other men liked him and therefore, I liked him. And he's like, I realized then that in hindsight, the only reason I liked him is because I liked what other men liked because I wanted other men to like me. So it goes full, circle to the idea that this is a man who is still rooted by pride and vainglory that he's orienting his entire life and pro professional career amongst the the clapping of hands, right, and trying to make, other people approve him. But he he also says if on a dime everyone had turned and, you know, despise this man and said, oh, like, this guy's a a a villain. He's a heck.
He's like, I would have just as easily gone along with them again. And he says, such is the state of the wayward soul who is not rooted in truth that you flutter around with the popular consensus and opinions of common man. It really to me, it evokes imagery of the the centers of lust in Dante's Inferno, right? That those who, were, sent to perdition for lust were sent in these essentially tornadoes of a a gust of wind that is constantly spinning you and spinning you and spinning you. And it it's funny that lust was the greatest of all the sins it seems that was plaguing, plaguing Augustine and he seems to have this sense of being wayward and untethered in life that this is the root of all of his rage and his jealousies and his paranoia and his insecurity.
He's constantly lusting after like this. Maybe not in the traditional sexual sense, of course, he's lusting after women, but he's constantly like yearning and idolizing like, I want people to like me. I want people to like me. But you can imagine just how uncertain that is because popular opinion is always changing. So again, there's a deep sense of restlessness and lack of roots in a man who is really searching for for home.
And it really, I think, just ties into how empty his career is. And from from this lens, I think you can understand why he hates his career of rhetoric so much and how something that makes him a lot of money and wins him a lot of praise makes him so miserable. It's not that the profession of rhetoric, oratory, and public speaking is bad, but his desires are trained on the wrong thing. So happiness is not about higher social status or more wealth. It's about properly loving the right things, which is loving oratory as a tool to serve virtue, to serve God.
That one will make you flourish, the other will make you miserable no matter how successful you are.
Shannon : It's interesting. Oftentimes, whether something's right or wrong sort of depends on our inter our inner attitude towards, for example, sex is beautiful within marriage. Outside of marriage, it's wrong. Right? It's the same thing, but it depends on the context.
It depends on the obedience. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be liked. Right? We all I think we have that all within us that we we want to be liked. That's not wrong.
But when it like you say, when it becomes pride, when it becomes so elevated, that's when it becomes a problem. You know, in a secular sense, you know, it's nothing wrong with owning a gun. A gun can protect you. You can do evil with it or you can protect your family. You can do good with it.
It's it depends on how much virtue you have, and having a lack of virtue means you're going to do something more likely to be evil or self serving and and, you know, morally wrong.
Sean : Exactly. And again, it's disordered desires, which is when you love these, you know, these good desires, like wanting to be liked, which is also good because, you know, you don't wanna be someone who's universally disliked and have zero regard for that. There's something to be said about being like a decent human being, a decent neighbor, a decent citizen of the state. But these noble desires like that or eros become unhealthy when you love these things more than goodness itself, more than virtue itself, more than God itself. And conversely, it's it ties back to scripture.
Right? Glory to God in the highest and peace to his people on earth. That when you have a true sense of charity that is a love for God and a love of your neighbor, and that's your your highest, your highest love that you order your life around, well, now your life will become properly ordered, and you will enjoy the true sense of peace. So if you don't give your proper due and glory to God and if you don't truly seek to love and will the good of the other, you will not know peace and such as the case of Augustine who's really putting on a masterclass of this, restlessness at this point now.
Shannon : It's the same thing with with money. You know, it it says in the Bible, it's not the, it's not money that's evil or having lots of money. It's the love of money. Again, love your lord with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, then your neighbor, then yourself when you get that order improper. And, you know, when you have those things disordered or misordered, that's when you're gonna get into some trouble.
Sean : 100%. And this is again, all this comes back to if you have properly ordered desires, it's almost like now the forces of fate and fortune or or in this case, God is going to come to your life and order your life that you don't have to worry about the rest of the details, like serendipity and grace come into your life the moment that you seek to him first and welcome him into your life. You have to let him in. This is important and Augustine will stress this. It's not ever that God was hiding from Augustine, but Augustine was hiding rejecting God who was constantly knocking at his door.
So it's I think this is always a interesting question whenever you you hear this in the world of those who are talking about, you know, something along the lines of, you know, why does God not answer my prayers or why doesn't God, you know, show up to my life. You know, in in some cases, you know, there's a real sense of desolation but, many times, I I think it's more often than not the case that a lot of people, they seem to be emotionally motivated by the desire of hoping and not wanting god to exist and therefore, believing even though they say, like, they don't believe off of evidence. It seems to be far more they are disbelieving because it will be in accordance with their heart, which is disordered in some way, usually to justify some, disordered desire. And as we said last week, self justification is the natural, stamping of the, the atheist or the, man driven by pride.
Shannon : Yeah. There's a great book that was written, in the eighteen hundreds, not about modern political parties, but it's called Liberalism is a Sin, and it it basically was sort of talking about when people reject the true church, you know, the Catholic church, that all of these, errors, starting with the Protestant Reformation, have crept into society. And it talks about this, that when man discovers that he can be the ultimate judge of what's what's right and wrong. It eases his conscience to not have to conform to to someone else's call on your life, you know, sort of like Lucifer did. I will not the maxim, I will not serve.
And so, yeah, for for people who are atheists, they think they're being intellectually honest, but they're they have an as subconscious bias that they're they're probably not even intellectually aware of.
Sean : And for me, this is not to say, you know, I know many brilliant, and sharp mind outside of the faith. And in fact, I'd say atheists tend to be more intellectually driven. Right? But I think the the the main point is, like, there's also just a lot of pressure on yourself if you are, you know, denying the the existence of God or a higher order of being or the natural law and the logos because this is the great challenge that atheists, you know, haven't been able to do is you can't ground morality in anything. So you have to somehow try to find a way that seems to be an impossible task to root a sense of objective morality and then you have to define good and evil by your own standpoint.
And in one sense, even if you were able to theoretically do this, which seems to be an impossibility, there's a great amount of pressure of it. Really asking, well, what is just? Is it what I say? Is it what you say? Is it what the common people say?
Well, everything just falls apart, right? Like, there's all of a sudden this added sense of pressure that seems to explain why a lot of, you know, philosophers who are non theists, had a lot of mental issues especially later in their life, right? The sense of burnout and, you know, unhappiness. Nietzsche, I think is a a great example of this of a man who tried to re, you know, completely wreck morality and reconstruct the system from the the ground up and it, well, it drove him insane. So there's a there's a really unhealthy pressure of trying to redefine good and evil of your own self and use that as the basis for building a flourishing society or for human happiness.
Shannon : And some people would say, well, let's just do it on what the majority says is right or wrong. But, of course, that changes, you know, because in the past, majority of people said slavery was right, and nobody today would say that. And so that that right there is proof that a majority is not the source of or can define good or evil because a lot of people might want the wrong things. So, yeah, those people are in they're in a hard spot to to come up with the answer.
Sean : It's also funny because there's you have the same problem that Augustine has now, which is you have no no authoritative answer to the problem of pain when you're in suffering, and then experiencing deep rooted agony. Right? Like at least what the classical philosophy and classical theology told you is, well, the truth will set you free. And if you act in accord with that which is true, you'll you'll either overcome the strength or it lean into the source of that conquers all the strengths and evils of the world that this is the promise that is fulfilled in classical philosophy and theology. But if you are re redefining good and evil as your on your own terms, which again ignoring the impossibility of doing so, there's also no longer a sense of the truth will set you free because it's no longer the truth, capital t, it's just my truth and your truth and it's okay.
It sound good in theory like, I'm gonna make my own meaning and that's total freedom, but that does like Augustine, that doesn't do anything for you when you have an aching heart and that you're absolutely made miserable or crushed by the storms of life. So you really cannot be wise in your own eyes. You have to lean into, well, God or at the very least, the truth, if not God, as the truth will set you free. If you act in accordance with the natural law, you'll flourish. If you go against it, say, like, Raskolnikov and Dostoevsky, you'll absolutely be driven insane and miserable and die.
Shannon : That's why I think it's so important what what many of our friends are doing here on X, which is not posting about politics and all that stuff, but posting the true, the good, and the beautiful. By elevating those things, it will draw other people to it and away from themselves because, like, complete beauty, you know, walk into Saint Peter's in Rome or our beautiful cathedral in New York or even a small beautiful church in, you know, Kansas or something, beauty inspires you. It makes you sort of get out of yourself and and and you look up, especially in Rome where they have these beautiful ceilings and stuff. But it just sort of inspires you. There's something beyond me, and I'm just so excited in in many ways for the future, even though we live in very dangerous times that there's a growing sense that, you know, just promote the true good and beautiful.
There's a verse, I can't quote it exactly from Jesus, like, you know, basically, if you exalt me, I will draw all men to myself. Ultimately, Jesus is the truth. Jesus is beautiful, glorious. And so by promoting even in Saint Paul, whatever is lovely, whatever is beautiful, focus on these things. He wasn't just talking about spiritual things, but just focusing on good because, really, God is the source of all good.
And so it's important. I encourage everybody in this space, don't just follow accounts that post pretty pictures or nice architecture or great philosophical thoughts. Become one even by you could post something once a day, some something true, good, and beautiful. You decide what interests you in that category because there's a lot of incredible things you'd be posting.
Sean : Yeah. I I think that's 100% right, and it goes back to the idea of when you, you know, where are you directing your focus and your vision because we're focusing, directing your focus and vision. This is what's going to channel and inform your desires. Are you looking at things that are good and sanctifying to your soul that will orient your dire desires to the the true good and beautiful and be healthy? Or you're going to spend your time like, even if you're doom scrolling, like, that misorienting your desires, which is why everyone well, they call it doom scrolling.
Right? You get this the this the voice from reality that leaves you with a sense of anxiety or doom or just general unhappiness. So yeah, I guess you could say this is a lesson of, practicality for today as well. It's just, you know, guide your focus, guide your gaze, control your gaze, and with the right vision, you will you'll at the very least have a a more closer communion with God and a closer relationship where you might even discern, you know, how to rightly order your day or how to rightly order your path in life. I had about, one last section here if there's unless there's anything you wanted to, say to that as well, Shannon.
And, also, if anyone wants to request the mic, feel free to do so now for any comments or questions.
Shannon : Also, if you just joined us, please, repost the space so more people can learn about Saint Augustine and confessions. And, yeah, go ahead and request the mic, and then when Sean gets finished with analyzing this last section, we will, open up the floor. Go ahead, Sean.
Sean : Yeah. So I suppose the the very last section of book four, which is coming out on the the sort of back end of Guston's grief over the loss of his, friend. He seems to have, he he finds Aristotle. Right? This this, you you think it would come from the fact that he's still a curious man who wants to know that which is true and he's also again really jaded with Manicheanism, his religion because it offers him no answers for the problem of pain, evil, and suffering.
So, he he's reading Aristotle and you might think like, oh, okay, like this is good, like he's now going to because Aristotle's great and he's loved by the church and Aquinas writes so much about Aristotle and he's a he is a fantastic philosopher and it's like, oh, through Aristotle, like so many other great fathers and great thinkers, church fathers, like this will be Augustine's entry into, back into the faith. But of course, much like when he had read scripture earlier, it falls flat. He reads Aristotle's categories which is basically a work that's, is a work that's a meditation on the nature of substance of things. It's very dry. It's very philosophic, but, basically, Aristotle is inquiring into the nature of the the origins of created beings and he says that all beings in creation can be divided into 10 categories or 10 substances.
So without getting into the details of this book, Aristotle talks about I mean, sorry. Augustine talks about how reading Aristotle got him so close to God, but not quite. That he deeply, deeply, deeply read and understood the source material which very few people of his day could understand. And this seems to be out of a earnest, searching a desire to find God and he goes, okay, Aristotle is he's so important that he is called the philosopher, capital t. And he's like, I get him now.
And he goes that he makes the mistake of believing that God is one of the 10 substances in Aristotle's created beings. In other words, the point of this is he makes the mistake believing that God is not the creator of the universe, but that God is a created being who lives inside of the universe and this of course is rooted largely in his religion Manichaeism which preaches that everything is essentially a materialist reality, but the problem is Augustine here, he comes so close to God but ultimately falls short and falls away and he uses this as another basis to strengthen his rejection of Christianity as he says, okay, see like God is not this creator of the universe. He's clearly one of these 10 substances and obviously, Aristotle knows better than the the the the Christians because look at how antiquated the scripture is and look at how thorough Aristotle here is. What my point of all this is, this seems to be getting back to the importance of education and the reality of many people who deny the faith that, first off, the the denial of the faith this touches back on the the Fulton Sheen quote from, last week which I'll butcher, but it's basically that he says that there's not 100 people on this earth who reject the Catholic church, but they reject what they think the Catholic church is.
And for basically the thirty two years that Augustine is rejecting Christianity, he's never actually rejecting Christianity, but he's rejecting a straw man of what he thinks Christianity is. He he he hasn't really understood what is the truth and this ties back to a lack of education. If we went back to our discussion in book one, Augustine says that so much of the tragedy of his sinful nature and waywardness was the fact that he didn't have any good teachers or mentors to guide him along the way. So he was taught to read the great books, but he wasn't taught to understand their meaning or purpose. So rather than using the books as a lens to understanding justice and virtue and truth, beauty, goodness, and God, instead he was just using them, to studying them to memorize facts so that he could get good grades in school or so that he could memorize passages to give speeches to win applause from others.
So he was being taught vainglory how to succeed in the world, but he wasn't talking, he wasn't using education as a means to discovering and discerning virtue, truth, and goodness. And we see the same thing here that his lack of an education and the lack of a mentor means that even his best attempts for God are falling short. So perhaps the idea here is don't look to philosophic texts alone. Don't look to the great books alone. Don't look to scripture alone.
Look at it in reference to the tradition ahead of it, guided by mentors who know it better than you. And this is a great way to not just be educated, but to really forge a soul that loves God.
Shannon : Balance. We balance faith. We balance reason. It's so important for people to have good friends around them, to bring out the best in us, to teach us. And, mentors are so important, and good mentors are are, I think, hard hard to find in the modern age.
I think more back in the medieval times, it was probably easier to to find a good moral mentor. But today, we live in challenging times, but that's why we take time, like we're doing this evening, to focus back on the great books and confessions. This was such a wonderful choice, Sean, to to do this thirteen week dive in. This is just week four, so we're not even not even a third of the way there yet.
Sean : I think that is the, the best and the most exciting part of all of this is, there's already been so much of a a gold mine, out of Augustine, and yet, we were not even halfway there. In in the grand scheme of things, he hasn't even gotten, close to actually repenting yet. So it's funny that and maybe this is where we'll start to see a turning point as he'll begin to reject his religion if we look a little forward here. But I think that one thing I love about this journey is it also helps us understand that, you know, be patient with Augustine's journey, which also means be patient with our own journey that it takes Augustine a long time to find God, even with the best of, interest and intentions which he'll start to foster in his twenties. That even if you're earnestly, seeking to, you know, right the wrongs of your past and earnestly seeking to move ahead in your life, you'll still need the sense of patience and grace.
You know, as the the famous Jordan Peterson line goes, you may think you're done with the past, but the past is not done with you. That, you know, right now what Augustine has to deal with is the consequences of twenty to twenty five plus years of sin. Right? That that doesn't go away. Even if he would be forgiven, if he turned to God, that even as he's searching for God, the fact that he still has so much distorted loves and desires means that he has to take baby steps that he's not really ready to, be entered into the faith.
He still has to properly, denounce his vainglory. He has to properly denounce his lust. He has to properly deny, the heresy of manachism. He needs some intellectual work. He needs some real education.
So I I think that this almost goes back to that idea you're talking about with confession about, like, be patient even if you're confessing the same sins every week. It's like you do need a little bit of grace and and patience as the best friend of all virtues that, man, it takes a long time, but just as Augustine or or God was patient with Augustine, so we are patiently reading through Augustine and I think, drinking more and more from his wisdom each week.
Shannon : Yeah. What we set our mind to, right, what we pay attention to affects our lives so many ways. And that's why, you know, watch less Netflix, you know, less scrolling on x even though it is addictive. Even the the beautiful stuff, the beautiful accounts I follow, you know, you could scroll all day on and take time to, you know, but turn the screens off and read either the scripture or great books like this, and it just it just does something to you.
Sean : Yeah. 100%. That's why we're doing this each and every single week is, you know, just meditating a little bit. Even if you don't feel like it, the the deep meditation on the great thinkers, the great theologians in scripture itself, it does change you over time. And, you know, we stick with this for thirteen weeks.
I I already feel pretty remarkably transformed after a month, but, you know, let alone three months, it's like, well, this is how we at least try to grow in virtue and grow in sanctity and grow in closer with communion and with our fellow friends. We get together in spaces and all sure to have good talks and discussions about, well, how can we be better servants of God and all that is, full of grace. So with that said, I've got about everything, out of the way that I had planned as far as written material and, and comments and haven't seen any, mic requests, so it might be appropriate to end here. Did you have any last comments or, takeaways or thoughts on the talk here, Shannon?
Shannon : I was just gonna say, I think Rafael had his hand up earlier, but then he dropped down. So I wasn't sure if he maybe got his question answered just by listening, or maybe he had a technical problem. But, give him a couple seconds, Rafael, if you wanna request the microphone again. And just reflecting a little bit on on just the sadness that, Augustine had for his friend and how he later saw that that was, you know, misdirected. Not not the the love and the care he had, but that he was, again, not eventually taking that to to the Lord.
And that was that was just really oh, I didn't hear I heard the mic request there. That was, just so sort of meaningful to read. Rafael, how are you, my friend?
Guest : Well, I've I've been better, Shannon, Sean. I would say that when I was thinking of when I was thinking about saying Augustine about this and this, and before, like, this is so much this is so much relatable to what's been happening these past, four days. I was incredibly drained out, incredibly stressed, probably angry to say the least about the infighting that was going on. But, but, yeah, when you brought up about the fact that you probably ordered your your sires and and that's about virtue. That was very, very, relatable for me because that's what I always try to figure out.
I remember talking to one of my mentors about this and he and I kind of talked about this a little bit, about living, about virtuous living as well as intellectualism. Yeah. My friend my mentor understood that, you know, of Western Scholasticism Western Scholasticism, it could be, at its worst, could be dry. Just so intellectual that it just kinda loses sight of the virtues that could be, you know, seasoned there to just to balance it. And I thought to myself, yeah.
I thought the same thing too. You know, I read it, of course. And just like how much, like, we lose sight of these little things or things that don't really matter in the grander scheme of things and we just miss it out. And I remember going to read a quote from my mentor. He said that, Virtuous living, I believe, is the cure.
It takes a great deal of studying and practice. When those two get out of balance, they're disheartening that person's life. I believe this. Unquote. And I agree with that too because, like, I I saw myself too.
I know from doing studying. And of course I I too fell for the same mistakes many times back when I was, you know, beginning as a young adult, so I I could totally relate to that. And my final point is like right now I'm doing a lot much better, much more properly ordered in my virtue and just got back to being like, well, if these things happen again, I should just learn to expect that from them. And if it and just not come at at most, if anything, I should not expect anything too much at the very least, but, it was terrible and it was I was really just and I got physically sick, so that was a consequence I had to pay for for that. I was like, yeah.
So I got someone who lost in the prettiest, like, that was it was somewhat similar to me as, like, the confusion, the shock that just why did this have to happen this way? It didn't have to happen this way at all. We could've just had an open, honest, virtuous discourse, and it just wasn't like that. It was just so much I was so angry. I wanted to literally bash everyone's heads, like, literally on each other because it's just like like, basically, you're just acting like just like But
Shannon : that's why we have the virtue of temperance.
Guest : Yeah. Well, I yeah. But I I if I didn't realize, I would not do it because I would just be terrified of doing it. So it's always costing us a thought, but I just couldn't do it though. If I even did it if I did it for real, I would just be so ashamed.
I'm like, I should not let that happen. But, yeah, it was just so bad. But but right now, I I've gotten a lot better. I just got myself got myself refocused and more determined than ever to try to live a virtuous life even if even if some people don't want it to believe that as such or don't see that as their highest priority.
Shannon : Yeah. People are gonna always, not do the right thing at some point. So we we look up and try to keep focused on not what other people are doing, but look at look to the God because if we get our it's sort of like, Jesus walking on the water and Peter's coming out and he looks down. And once we start to take our eyes and put them on other things or other people, we're gonna be, disappointed and they're gonna bring out the worst in us. And so we look up.
It's become the quote of this, this series of talks, I think, Sean.
Sean : Yeah. Absolutely. And I would just, touch to that quickly as well that, I mean, forgiveness is important as well. And and so I I think it's good that you seem to have this, sort of grace of at least recognizing that you can't control what other people do, and that's, you know, okay. Like, you know, it happens.
People will let you down. That's just part of the nature of us all being sinners in a fallen world. But it it seems like you're not holding on to, resentment, which is a a great thing, and you you still have your resolution to seek to improve each day. And one other thing I might add that I always love to remind myself that well is it's it can be very helpful to also add your, you know, circle. Right?
And who are you, spending time with? You know, maybe this doesn't always apply to family or people that you're sharing a, you know, a living space with, but, as far as friendships go, we're we're talking about virtuous friendships. You become who you hang out with. And if you find that there's a lot of people who maybe, you know, scoff at virtue or or just just don't care for it, or if if they're holding you back, these are are times where you can perhaps look at, you know, healthy boundaries as well as, yeah, these people, they they just seem to always be, like, you know, holding me back in a way from trying to become the man I want to be or, you know, first conversely, you said you had some mentors and people who inspire you. It's like, yeah.
You know, spend more time with them. I'm sure these are things you already know and are doing, but I think it can always be helpful and useful to just do a little audit of where are you, where are you going, and how are the people around you, you know, helping your goals. William, I I I see you requested as well, so happy to have you go up, my friend. Yeah. Thanks.
I just dropped into this space after work, and I didn't know it sounds like you've been doing this for about a month. Can you just bring me up to speed to what book and the confessions you guys are at so I can, participate actively in the future? Yeah. Absolutely. We've been, yeah, chapter by chapter read through.
Today, we just did, book four. So book four of the cane, only about a third of the way done. So, yeah, you can I'd say the we we, of course, have all the other spaces recorded if you wanted to listen back to them. I'm not sure if you've, read Confessions as well, but, it's not too long of a read. And, yeah, I know.
It's it's been booked for thus far. Happy to give you some quick spark notes as far as what came came before that as well. But, you'd be starting at book five would be next Wednesday.
Shannon : Also, William Thanks.
Sean : Yeah. I've read it before, but, not read it through the lens of, like, enacting it in virtue, on a day to day basis with a with a community of practical search. So read it only academically. So appreciate you.
Shannon : Also, William, immediately following this space, I'm gonna stream last week's conversation book three on a video stream, So you can catch that one. And, Sean, I know you're working on that. I don't know if you have it done yet, but, all these previous conversations are on my YouTube, Catholic frequency. And, Sean, I'm not sure if they're up on yours yet, but, this audio, of course, is on Sean's feed. Just keep scrolling, and you'll you'll find all of them there.
Sean : Most definitely. And, yeah, if I just touch to that point too, William as far as that's what you said is exactly why we're we're doing these, spaces is because it's, even in in institutions where you you read the great books, it more for the not is the fact that it it can be just boiling down to academic. And there it really takes a new light when you can, really get together and try to, in my opinion, you know, personalize it and see, well, how can we apply this to our lives as well? Like, how can this transform our lives as opposed to just look at looking at it as an, you know, antiquated artifact of the past. Right?
We're not just reading books to stack up a, collection to to keep on our shelf, but, no, they're they're meant to, they have something to share with us because they're they're part of the great conversation and we're part of the great conversation. So we leave the read the great books of the past so that we can help continue, writing a beautiful chapter in today's day and age.
Shannon : We hope you've enjoyed this conversation on book four of Saint Augustine's Confessions with Sean Biraby. If you're looking to deepen your faith and stay connected, be sure to sign up for the Catholic frequency newsletter delivered straight to your inbox once a week. Our newsletter brings you inspiring stories, spiritual insights, and it's tailored to help you grow closer to God. You can sign up for the newsletter on our website at catholicfrequency.com, and you can follow this podcast on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. That way, you'll be notified every time we release a new episode.

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