FREE ESSAY ON AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS ESSAY

AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS ESSAY

In the Confessions, by Saint Augustine, Augustine addressed himself articulately and
passionately to the persistent questions that stirred the minds and hearts of men since
time began. The Confessions tells a story in the form of a long conversion with God.
Through this conversion to Catholic Christianity, Augustine encounters many aspects of
love. These forms of love help guide him towards an ultimate relationship with God. His
restless heart finally finds peace and rest in God at the end of The Confessions.
Augustine finds many ways in which he can find peace in God. He is genuinely sorry for
having turned away from God, the source of peace and happiness. Augustine is extremely
thankful for having been given the opportunity to live with God. Augustine uses love as
his gate to God's grace. 
Throughout The Confessions, love and wisdom, the desire to love and be loved, and his
love for his concubine, are all driving forces for Augustine's desire to find peace in
God. The death of his friend upsets him deeply, but also allows him to pursue God to
become a faithful Christian. Augustine often experiences darkness, blindness, and
confusion while attempting to find rest in God, but he knows that when he eventually
finds him his restless heart will be saved. Augustine started out in childhood with a
restless heart because he had to live in two different worlds. These worlds consisted of
that of his mother's religious faith, and the world of everything else. These two worlds
confused and disturbed Augustine as a child. In his mother's world, talk consisted of
Christ the Savior and about the mighty god who helps us especially to go to heaven. In
the other world, talk was about achieving. It seems as if Augustine felt that if he were
to live in both of these worlds, his life would turn out to be nothing. He believed he
would not accomplish anything he would be remembered for. He became unhappy with the idea
of his life amounting to nothing. This is why Augustine turned to love. 
He felt that love might help him have a direct purpose in life and would help him through
his conversion. Love should not be that of evil. Saint Augustine searched for the answer
of a question that asked if love reaches out hopelessly and harmfully, how can it turn
around to be productive and wholesome to the human soul? Love became a necessity for all
people. For Augustine, the answer to this question was love. The first love must be for
the love of God in Augustine's mind. It must come before all other forms of love.
Augustine states that, "The thought of you stirs him so deeply that he cannot be content
unless he praises you, because you made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace
until they rest in you" (I, 1). Augustine talks of many different forms of love. Another
form that he talks about and demonstrates many times in The Confessions is the desire to
love and to be loved. Augustine's relation to his mistress focuses on the problem of
restless loves, while showing that Augustine had the desire to love and the desire to be
loved. For one thing, he went to Carthage wanting to be in love. He evidently was not in
Carthage long before he found his mistress. Many young men stayed with a woman until the
time came to marry them back then. This is what Augustine did. He states that, "In those
days I lived with a woman, not my lawful wedded wife but a mistress whom I had chosen for
no special reason but that my restless passions had alighted on her. But she was the only
one and I was faithful to her" (IV, 4). 
Wisdom itself meant that the one true order of the world is what makes everything stick
together. Augustine later recognized this as God's truth and word, by which God had made
all things. This wisdom came into the world as Christ. Augustine's conversion is clear in
outline and was greatly influenced by different variations of love. From childhood he had
loved the name of Christ and associated with his mother about this and about her love for
him. Also, when he read Cicero it summoned him to embrace the truth and love the wisdom
of knowing the truth. He later experienced renewed love for the church and for Catholic
things from Ambrose. Once God had come to him in compelling love, his surrender to a new
life simply replaced, if it did not completely abolish, the old tormented division. 
The death of a very close friend of Augustine's made him realize that all love should be
rooted in God. All our love starts with God's seed, and over time, new branches of love
will grow and flourish. Augustine's friend became critically ill with a fever. While he
lay unconscious, his friend was baptized a Christian. Eventually, Augustine's friend
passed away and Augustine felt extreme remorse and grief. Augustine reflected that all
human love is destined to perish unless this love is grounded in the eternal God who
never changes. While love exists for those individual souls who please us, this love
should always have an origin from God. 
All these themes of love helped and guided Augustine to his conversion. His conversion
was the discovery of a new self and the discovery of the new world he found through this
conversion. The conversion taught him truth. Augustine discovered the redirection of his
scattered loves first by waking to an overwhelming desire to find the truth, especially
about his personal situation. His desire to know wisdom, which was activated by Cicero,
brought about a new love for Christ, the Word or truth of God. Full engagement with the
love of Christ was still yet to come for Augustine. His mind was still not at peace or
satisfied with any one direction. Probably the most important and influential form of
love that Augustine had was love for God and love for Christ. Augustine started to
realize the important roles that Christ and God played in his life. Augustine saw a whole
new realm and he opened his life up to God more and more each day by talking to him and
letting him now that he loved him very much. Augustine states, "Then, O Lord, you laid
your most gentle, most merciful finger on my heart and set my thoughts in order, for I
began to realize that I believed countless things which I had never seen or which I had
taken place when I was not there to see" (VI, 5). Adhering to God as love's priority
proved a more extended way than he had imagined. It helped to shape his life, his mind
and his beliefs. He never realized until now what a huge difference it makes in one's
life when it is opened up to love and love of Christ. The answer lies in God's grace for
Augustine. These answers are to his utmost difficult questions on life and faith. 
The subtle and cunning loves of the heart had defined Augustine's journey from the first.
At no time in his life had he been without love, but he had loved in scattered, hidden,
and conflicting ways. He had loved Monica. He had loved the image and name of Christ, he
even at one point loved evil, which scared him. Augustine felt the need to redirect his
love and this redirection would lead him in the way and light of God. Augustine seems to
be dissatisfied with himself and his need for God. Through The Confessions he leaves
himself and his past to praising God and loving him. Augustine hopes to teach others
about that love which God placed in him that led him to an eternal relationship with God.
All of Augustine's loves in turn became love of Christ. Although Augustine might not have
realized this, it is obviously true. At first he was redirecting his loves directly to
Christ, but finally he realized all his love was for Christ. Augustine found a place in
God that he had never imagined could happen. His guilty restless heart finally found rest
in God. 
The Confessions is the story of a conversion. This conversion took place in the garden; a
conversion that took place from the time he read Cicero at age eighteen; a conversion
that took place across his whole life. The story was not just of having arrived at a
certain point, but also of the long way around to get there. Love played a significant
role in this conversion. The old restless heart that Augustine once had finally found
peace and rest in God. It helped guide him towards God and Christ in a positive way that
it influenced the rest of his life. In the Confessions, by Saint Augustine, Augustine
addressed himself articulately and passionately to the persistent questions that stirred
the minds and hearts of men since time began. The Confessions tells a story in the form
of a long conversion with God. Through this conversion to Catholic Christianity,
Augustine encounters many aspects of love. These forms of love help guide him towards an
ultimate relationship with God. 
His restless heart finally finds peace and rest in God at the end of The Confessions.
Augustine finds many ways in which he can find peace in God. He is genuinely sorry for
having turned away from God, the source of peace and happiness. Augustine is extremely
thankful for having been given the opportunity to live with God. Augustine uses love as
his gate to God's grace. Throughout The Confessions, love and wisdom, the desire to love
and be loved, and his love for his concubine, are all driving forces for Augustine's
desire to find peace in God. The death of his friend upsets him deeply, but also allows
him to pursue God to become a faithful Christian. Augustine often experiences darkness,
blindness, and confusion while attempting to find rest in God, but he knows that when he
eventually finds him his restless heart will be saved. Augustine started out in childhood
with a restless heart because he had to live in two different worlds. These worlds
consisted of that of his mother's religious faith, and the world of everything else. 
These two worlds confused and disturbed Augustine as a child. In his mother's world, talk
consisted of Christ the Savior and about the mighty god who helps us especially to go to
heaven. In the other world, talk was about achieving. It seems as if Augustine felt that
if he were to live in both of these worlds, his life would turn out to be nothing. He
believed he would not accomplish anything he would be remembered for. He became unhappy
with the idea of his life amounting to nothing. This is why Augustine turned to love. He
felt that love might help him have a direct purpose in life and would help him through
his conversion. 
Love should not be that of evil. Saint Augustine searched for the answer of a question
that asked if love reaches out hopelessly and harmfully, how can it turn around to be
productive and wholesome to the human soul? Love became a necessity for all people. For
Augustine, the answer to this question was love. The first love must be for the love of
God in Augustine's mind. It must come before all other forms of love. Augustine states
that, "The thought of you stirs him so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises
you, because you made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in
you" (I, 1). Augustine talks of many different forms of love. Another form that he talks
about and demonstrates many times in The Confessions is the desire to love and to be
loved.