The Sacrament Of Love: Center Of Augustine’s Spirituality

The Dutch Augustinian, Tarsicius van Bavel describes Christian spirituality as a response to the Gospel message; this response is always shaped by an outlook on a particular text of the Gospel. The consequence is that no two persons can understand a particular passage of the Gospel in the same way, as each person listens to it in a personal way and stresses particular contents. This understanding makes it inevitable to encounter different colors of the Christian spirituality. We can, therefore, talk about the Augustinian spirituality, Benedictine spirituality, Dominican spirituality, Cistercian spirituality, Franciscan spirituality, Ignatian spirituality, among others.

The question that looms at the horizon is: “What is the center or foundation of Saint Augustine’s spirituality?” That is, “what is it, that distinguishes Augustinian spirituality from other shades of Christian spirituality?” The foundation of Augustine’s spirituality is love of neighbor and community life. Bavel distinguishes between the Benedictine spirituality and the Augustinian spirituality by saying that in the Benedictine tradition, the ‘monastery church’ was at the heart of the life of the Benedictines, but in the Augustinian tradition, the ‘common room’ is at the center of the life of the community. This is not in any way to undermine the place of prayer in the spirituality of Saint Augustine- the Spiritual Giant of Hippo remains one of those saints that did not only emphasize the place of prayer in the Christian life but wrote extensively on it.

Rather than undermine prayer, I would suppose that in emphasizing the “love of neighbor and community life”, Augustine, goes beyond prayer to emphasize the fruit of community prayer, which cannot be expressed adequately outside the parameters of love. In The Rule of Saint Augustine, it reads: “The main purpose of you having come together is to live harmoniously in your house, intent upon God in oneness of heart and mind” (Ch. 1.1). What is prayer if afterwards a man or woman cannot love his or her neighbor? What is the value of prayer if after encountering God, a man or woman cannot love the neighbor in whom God abides? In the Confessions, Augustine writes: “And what was it that delighted me? Only this: to love and be loved” (2.2.2). In another text in his Sermon on First John, he teaches:

Once and for all, a short rule is laid down for you: love and do whatever you will. If you keep silence, do it out of love. If you cry out, do it out of love. If you refrain from punishment, do it out of love. Let the root of love be within. From such a root, nothing but good can come (7.8).

Very significant concept in Augustine’s understanding of love in his Sermon on First John is the use of the word “root”: “Let the root of love be within. From such a root, nothing but good can come”. A root is an important part of a plant which attaches the plant to the ground for support. It is from the root that water and nourishment are conveyed to the other parts of the plant through numerous branches and fiber. This will imply for us who are Christians that there is a need to have love as the central processing unit of all our actions, thoughts and words. Saint Augustine knew that if love processes all that we do, say and think about, our life will be a powerful manifestation of the that love that abides within us. Thus, Augustine writes in the Confessions:

My weight is my love; wherever I go, I am driven by it. By the love of God, we catch fire ourselves and by moving up, find our place and our rest (13.9).

The expression of love for Augustine, goes beyond the immediate and tangible, and, therefore, a sacrament rooted in Christ or God. This means that our love points to something deeper and reflects a greater reality than our actions, thoughts and words that are borne out of love. This reality is God who is LOVE. Robert Dodaro explains further that love in Augustine is a sacrament because the love that we love and by which we love is known only partially. This is because, to love fully would mean to know God fully who is Love. We, therefore, love God and our neighbor by entering into Love itself which is God, who now becomes a force that gives vital impulse and direction to the activities of the human person. In Augustine, a connection is made between the lover (myself), the loved (my neighbor) and Love (God Himself). This is expressed in Augustine’s instruction in Sermon 336. 2:

Let us love, and love without looking for reward, for it is God whom we love, and we can find nothing better than him. Let us love him for his own sake, and love ourselves in him, though again for his sake. For a man truly loves his friend when he loves God in his friend: either because God is in that friend, in other than that he might be in him. That is the nature of true love; if we love for any other true reason, we are hating rather than loving.

Therefore, love is not just one of the Christian virtues to be possessed and expressed by the Christian; love is far deeper and essential, as it is not only the determinant of the Christian manner of life but a manifestation of God who is Love. It is within this context that Augustine refers to love as a sacrament.

In the text from Sermon 336. 2, Saint Augustine, talking about love, says: “I am driven by it”. Having been driven by love, Michael Cardinal Pellegrino points out the following as the consequences of being driven by love in Saint Augustine:

1. Love lightens the burden of the Christian life: by this Augustine means that love makes the unbearable bearable; the difficult easy. When a Christian loves, it becomes possible and easier to live with a difficult person. It becomes easier to bear sufferings and pain. He writes in his Treatise on the Good of Widowhood that: “Toils are not a burden to him who loves” (41: 338). He, therefore, asks: “What do you love? For, when a man loves, he experiences no weariness or else he loves the weariness itself” (41: 338).

2. Love makes a new man: while sin makes a man become like the old man, the old Adam, love makes an old man, a new man. Christ came to make all things new, and this is possible through love, for it is by love that the old becomes new. Thus, Saint Augustine prays to God: “Intensify my love that I may fulfil the commandment” ( In Ps. 68. 18).

3. Love brings peace: when love becomes the deepest motivation of the human action and gives it direction, anxieties and fears that go with the old man weakens and such a soul is overtaken by peace as such a soul seeks only to give and to give itself. As love grows in a soul, the more it grows in assurance, and thus, peace.

4. Love brings freedom: love for Augustine, is an action that flows from freedom and not slavery or fear; for no one can love if not he or she who dwells in freedom. This is the freedom that expands the heart and makes us live in the freedom of the children of God.

5. Love is the root of all good works: while avarice is the root of all evil, love for Augustine is the root of all good works. In Sermon 209: 3, Saint Augustine writes that: “All the other gifts of God come together are not enough to give an action value, if the bond of love is missing”. In Sermon 354: 6, he writes further that love, “is the only thing which binds all else together; without which all else is worthless; and which, whether it is, draws everything else to itself”.

As we continue our pilgrim journey in a world where there is so much hatred, pain and unforgiveness, may God give us the grace to love to such a point where we would forget ourselves for love of Him. “The soul once forgot itself indeed, but in loving the world; now it forgets itself but in loving the World’s Maker” (Sermon 11. 3).