Why I admire St. Augustine...

"Can any praise be worthy of the Lord's majesty? How magnificent his strength! How inscrutable his wisdom! Man is one of your creatures, Lord, and his instinct is to praise you. He bears about him the mark of death, the sign of his own sin, to remind him that you thwart the proud. But still, since he is a part of your creation, he wishes to praise you. 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 are restless until they rest in you"
- Saint Augustine, Confessions

I look for great men and women whom I might emulate, people whose lives speak of God's mercy and love, people whose stories tell of the struggle to find and embrace God. I don't know whether our age is one in which there are few such persons, or if is is merely one in which we as a society do not esteem such persons as we ought (and therefore their stories go untold). I presume it to be the latter case. Maybe I just don't read enough modern biographies? Nonetheless, I often find myself turning to the past in search of such role models. When I turn to the past I am certainly not disappointed. In doing so I find a whole host of great men and women whose lives inspired the soul to pursue life, love, and the divine.

St. Augustine was an incredible man. For many, he remains the pre-eminent example of a great sinner turned great saint. Yes, he was a genius who lives on as one of the greatest minds in the western tradition. But what makes him truly great was his searching for truth, his desire for the divine. In the famous opening paragraph of his Confessions he is able to express the human condition in such a small handful of words: our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you. Augustine spent his life seeking this rest, seeking his beloved in whom alone he might find wholeness and satisfaction. This is why I admire Augustine: he struggled and searched; he would not be content with anything less than his heart's true desire, God. His was a life that inspires.

I find it very telling that the central character in his famous 'auto-biography', the Confessions, is God. Augustine knew what life was about; he knew what was important.