In the city of Milan, in the year 386 A.D., a young man named Augustine stood on the precipice of a decision that could change the course of Western history. Raised in the backwaters of the Roman empire, he had made it to the height of society as a speechwriter for the Roman emperor, becoming one of the most influential people in the world.

Yet, despite being catapulted to fame, Augustine was not happy. A year before, he passed a beggar on the street who was blissfully intoxicated. How could this man, who stank to high heavens and had the most miserable existence possible, be so frustratingly happy, while he, Augustine, the imperial rhetor, was completely miserable?

Augustine had recently discovered the philosophy of Plato, who taught that the ultimate grounding of reality was something non-physical and other-worldly. Through Plato, Augustine came to the letters of St. Paul, and began to consider following Paul into Christianity.

But still Augustine hesitated. “Cras, cras,” he echoed the cry of the crow (“tomorrow, tomorrow!”). Raised by a devoutly Christian mother, but never baptized because of the objections of his pagan father, Augustine could not make up his mind to follow where his intellectual search was leading him, and did not want to give up the life of luxury of the imperial court. “Give me chastity, but not yet!” was his prayer.

Then one day he heard of two members of the secret police who had discovered a copy of Athanasius’s Life of St. Anthony – the first history of monasticism, the quest to follow Christ more closely in the religious life. Amazed by what they found in this book, they gave up their posts in the secret police and dedicated their lives as desert ascetics (monks).

Augustine was left in turmoil. “Simple people are taking heaven by storm, while we clever people without a heart wallow in the materialist world of flesh and blood!” Distraught, he wept over his inability to commit to what he knew was a better life. As he wept, he heard two children playing in the house next door, chanting “tolle lege, tolle lege” (take and read, take and read). It must have been, he thought, some children’s game. But then he looked up, and saw his friend’s copy of St. Paul’s letters, and remembered how he had just heard that St. Anthony was converted by the fortuitous hearing of the Gospel passage about selling all of one’s possessions, and so he picked up St. Paul’s letters and opened them up:

“Not in promiscuity and lust, not in rivalry and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh,” he read, just as we heard last Sunday from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. “I had no wish to read more,” Augustine later wrote. “At once a light of serenity flooded into my heart and all the darkness of doubt was dispelled. … Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new.”

The Augustine we’re talking about is St. Augustine of Hippo, who went on not only to be baptized but to embrace a life of total dedication to God in a religious community (the successor to which counts Pope Leo XIV as a member), to become a priest and a bishop, and then to become the most influential theologian in the history of the Western Christianity, whose synthesis between Plato and St. Paul, between philosophy and Christianity, stands at the foundation of the Catholic harmony of faith and reason. Augustine’s story of his conversion, The Confessions, was the first ever autobiography, and his penetrating psychological analysis remains unparalleled. It is one of the most beautiful and influential books ever written.

In that moment, Augustine knew that St. Paul was absolutely correct: If he wanted to believe, if he wanted to set out upon the journey of faith before which he had hesitated for so long, he must make no provision at all for “the desires of the flesh.” After living with a concubine, fathering a son at a young age, taking up with another concubine for the express purpose of displeasing his mother, and otherwise making extensive “provision for the desires of the flesh,” he saw that, for him, it would have to be all or nothing. Either he gave complete control to the passions inside him, or to the Beauty ever ancient and ever new that was calling.

Advent is the shortest liturgical season. I’ve heard many friends say it should be extended. But Holy Mother Church has been wise to bless us with this short season to remind us of the urgency of preparing for the Lord’s coming. This urgency that Augustine felt (“Simple people are taking heaven by storm, while we clever people without a heart wallow in the materialist world of flesh and blood!”) is the urgency of John the Baptist’s preaching in the Gospel: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?”

          Last Sunday, we saw that the Introit or Entrance Antiphon sets the theme of each Mass. Last Sunday, it was the theme of prayer, of lifting up one’s heart and mind to God, that is such an important part of our Advent preparation for the Lord’s birth. Today, the introit points to a theme running through each of the Scripture readings: that the birth of the Messiah heralds the saving mission to all nations: “People of Zion, behold, the Lord is coming to save all nations; and the Lord shall cause you to hear his majestic voice for the joy of your heart.”

          John chastises the Pharisees for thinking that they will be safe on the day of judgement simply for being Jews: “And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones.” Conversion is urgently necessary for them and for us: “Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”

          The arrival of the day when people from all nations will stream towards the Lord’s holy mountain, when the simple will take Heaven by storm, means that the Lord comes to do much more than the Jews thought He would: throw off the yolk of Roman occupation and be a political liberator of Israel. His mission being for all nations means that He comes to set man free from an affliction faced by the whole world, not just those living under Roman tyranny.

          Christ comes to set us free from sin, to give life a new purpose and a decisive direction, to explode the limited horizons of those who like the pre-conversion Augustine could only live for the things of this world. John stands baptizing in the River Jordan, the river that marked the boundary of the Promised Land. Centuries before, after forty years of wandering in the desert, a new generation was ready to cross that definitive boundary into a new life of fidelity to the Lord – the generation that only knew how to be slaves having died in the forty years of wandering.

          John could have baptized in a lot of places, but he chose this river central to the Jewish people’s self-understanding. They must commit to a new life, and they must do it now. The urgency of preparing for the coming of the One who will “baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire” is even greater than the urgency of entering the Promised Land. He will separate the wheat from the chaff, the nourishing grain from the useless stalks, and “the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

          To the same Pharisees who do not repent at John’s warning, the Lord Himself will say that the worst of sinners, “the tax collectors and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you,” because they heard and repented. “Simple people are taking heaven by storm.”

          So, how are you still sitting on the fence? What’s the part of your life in which, like the young Augustine, you are still saying, “cras, cras,” – “tomorrow, tomorrow.” “Lord, make me chaste, but not yet,” was St. Augustine’s prayer. Maybe yours is, “Lord, make me forgiving, but not yet,” or “Lord, make me generous, but not yet,” or any other.

          Augustine was not an old man when he uttered those famous words, “Late have I loved thee, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new. Late have I loved thee.” But after His encounter with the Lord, any time without Him seemed like time wasted. Waste no more time, but repent, because “the kingdom of Heaven is at hand!”

          The good news today is that the Lord who will appear in the terrible majesty of judgement is the same merciful Lord who “shall judge the poor with justice, and decide aright for the land’s afflicted.” When, having pondered the ways in which you are hesitating like the young Augustine, you accuse yourself of your faults in the Sacrament of Confession, His judgement is always the same: mercy, and a welcome to the holy mountain upon which there will be no harm or ruin, where all will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord.

The Rev. Royce V. Gregerson

Parish Church of Our Lady of Good Hope, Fort Wayne

II Sunday of Advent, A.D. MMXXV