I was at the University the other day, studying for my English final, when I ran into my philosopher friend, Ole. Ole was studying for his philosophy final, go figure, but we ended up talking about Augustine. I have always been interested in Augustine, and have been wanting sometime or another to read Confessions. But anyways, the conversation went around this notes. I think they are rather interesting and very thought provoking. It almost makes me want to take a philosophy class. Anywho, Ole was very gracious in e-mailing me some notes of his. And maybe this will connect with others, maybe not, but nonetheless, its very intense.
Great art Thou, O lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Thy power, of
Thy wisdom there is no number. And man desires to praise Thee. He is but a
tiny part of all that Thou hast created. He bears about him his mortality ,
the evidence of his sinfulness, and the evidence that Thou dost resist the
proud: yet this tiny part of all that Thou hast created desires to praise
thee.
Thous doest so excite him that to praise Thee is his joy. [or her joy]. For
Thou has made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless till they rest in
Thee.
(from Bk 1)
So I set about finding a way to gain the strength that was necessary for
enjoying You. And I could not find it until I embraced the Mediator between
God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who is over all things, God blessed
forever, and who was calling unto me and saying: I am the Way, the Truth,
and the Life; and who brought into union with our nature that Food which I
lacked the strength to take: for the Word was made flesh that Your Wisdom,
by which You created all things, might give suck to our souls' infancy. For
I was not yet lowly enough to hold the lowly Jesus as my God, nor did I know
what lesson His embracing of our weakness was to teach. For Your Word, the
eternal Truth, towering up above the highest parts of Your creation, lifts up
to Himself those that were cast down. He built for Himself here below a
lowly house of our clay, that by it He might bring down from themselves and
bring up to Himself those who were to be made subject, healing the
swolleness of their pride and fostering their love: so that their
self-confidence might grow no further but rather diminish, seeing the deity
at their feet, humbled by the assumption of our coat of human nature: to the
end that weary at last they might cast themselves down upon His humanity and
rise again in His rising.
(from Bk VII)
And then these were some of my notes:
"When I was young, I thought I had to wrestle with the Devil, but now I know
that I wrestle with God, and that I always wrestled with God: and I know now
that God always wins."
-attributed to Francis of Assisi
"Augustine's sense of the human self, the "I," is a question. We are a
living question, not only the one from which the question proceeds and who
moves through the question to some place, not only are we the one in whom
the question takes place, but we are the very enactment of the question: who
am I?
Augustine struggles throughout the Confessions to enact this question,
seeking desperately for an answer, saying "I became a great enigma to
myself."
Asking the question raises the recognition that the human self is suspended
between the finite and the infinite. We are fallen and have forgotten the
infinite image of God within us, desperately seeking its infinite Source.
To enact the question "who am I?" is to re-orientate toward your life toward
the infinite Source: God, the Giver of life.
Augustine, however, finds that he cannot on his own strength ever answer the
question on his own. Rather, the embrace of the Crucified Christ reveals to
him his true self: broken, sinful, naked, desperate, alone-- yet not alone!
Embraced in the unconditional love of the One who was crucified with Him!
Augustine finds the answer to the question, "who am I?" spoken from the
cross and becomes a living response and reply, surrendering himself into the
embrace of Christ."
-Ole Schenk, paraphrasing the notes of Michael Poellet, 2007.
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