Bigger than our Brains

Seeing the great humility of St. Augustine

08/28/2024

Matthew 23:8-12 Jesus spoke to his disciples: "Do not be called 'Rabbi.' You have but one teacher, and you are all brothers. Call no one on earth your father; you have but one Father in heaven. Do not be called 'Master'; you have but one master, the Christ. The greatest among you must be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled; but whoever humbles himself will be exalted."

I am going to commit a terrible injustice today on the feast of St. Augustine by trying to cover his remarkable life in an eight minute homily. St. Augustine is arguably one of the greatest lights in Church history, like a Michael Jordan in basketball or a Johann Sebastian Bach in music.

The historian Dairmaid MacCulloch observed: “Augustine’s impact on Western Christian thought can hardly be overstated; only his beloved example, Paul of Tarsus, has been more influential, and Westerners have generally seen Paul through Augustine’s eyes.” But I would suggest to you that Augustine’s brilliance and holiness was only surpassed by his humility.

I want to share three Augustinian anecdotes (stories) that shed a bright light on his humility. The first anecdote Augustine recounted himself in his famous book Confessions. Only the Bible has been translated into more languages than the Confessions. One day in the year 386 Augustine had wandered into a garden in the home where he was staying.

He distinctly heard a child’s voice saying in Latin “Tolle lege, tolle, lege” meaning “Take up and read.” Now, at the time Augustine was a renowned teacher of rhetoric at the prestigious school in Milan and had found the Bible unimpressive and not worth his time. But this time he humbly listened to this child’s voice and began to read the sacred page.

It was as if scales fell from his eyes and he began to perceive how the Scriptures were written primarily not by men but by the hand of the Holy Spirit. In fact, if you read the Latin-English version of the Confessions, you will find in the margins that nearly every other sentence is an allusion to Scripture.

In other words, only after learning from a humble child could Augustine begin to learn the wisdom of God. Every time we pass over reading the Bible to read supposedly "better books" because we feel the Bible is below our intelligence, St. Augustine would caution us not to be too smart for our own good.

The second Augustinian anecdote is while the Doctor of Grace (how tradition refers to Augustine) was working on his magnum opus, his masterpiece, the De Trinitate, on the Holy Trinity. Augustine was attempting to unravel the most dense and most central mystery of the Christian faith.

How can God be essentially one, and yet remain three distinct divine Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Feeling like his brain was tied like a pretzel, he decided to go for a walk along the seashore to get some fresh air and some fresh inspiration. And he got both, but not exactly as he expected.

While walking along the shore, Augustine saw a little boy hurriedly running back and forth from the water to a hole he had dug in the sand. Watching this little boy carrying water from the ocean to his little hole, Augustine asked him what on earth he was doing. The boy replied he was trying to pour the ocean into the small hole.

Augustine smiled and said, “Son, that is impossible.” The boy smiled back and said, “That is no more impossible than you trying to fit the mystery of the Holy Trinity into your mind.” And the small boy suddenly disappeared. Augustine got the point. It is very telling that of his many memorable writings, St. Augustine never finished his De Trinitate, perhaps it was a humble acknowledgement that God is always bigger than our brains.

And the third Augustinian anecdote is my favorite of all because I once visited the place where it happened. St. Augustine retells the touching story of the final days before his mother died in Ostia, outside of Rome. Mother and son sat by a window overlooking the coast, and talked of what the life of the blessed souls would be like in heaven. Augustine said he felt transported to heaven with his mother.

Of course, you will remember how Monica prayed for her wayward son Augustine for 30 years before he finally converted whole-heartedly to Christianity. For a loving mother like Monica, I bet she felt like she was already in heaven having her saintly son at her side.

And it takes a huge dose of humility for arrogant boys to listen and learn from their mothers. And Augustine humbly learned a lot from his mother, whose feast day we celebrated fittingly yesterday, August 27. I can attest that as a stubborn teenager I found it hard to listen and learn from my mom. But today it seems I learn something new every time she opens her mouth.

In the gospel today, Jesus urges humility in his Church leaders. Instead of being called “rabbi” or “teacher” or “father” – all titles that St. Augustine could rightly claim – Jesus urges us to be humble servants. Why? Because “whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” St. Augustine’s greatness can hardly be overstated, but his chief virtue was his tremendous humility.

Praised be Jesus Christ!