MODULE IN GR.

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AUGUSTINIAN SPIRITUALITY
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Topic : Lesson 4 St. Augustine Search for Truth

I. Introduction:

Augustine claimed that without the will, “man cannot live rightly.” He affirms in yet
another place, “We could not act rightly except by this free choice of will.” The logic here
is simple: man cannot choose the good without having the ability to choose.

II. Competency/ies:

Guide them to have their own perspective and understanding of the lessons.

III. Specific Objectives:

● To have a broad mind and understanding of what God wants to show us from
the teachings of St. Augustine
● To think critically to the story of the life of St. Augustine
● Invoke the Spirit to guide the children in our times.

IV. Pre assessment:

Draw and color: Things that you want to do in your life.

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Reflect: from the first activity, do you think it will be useful
for you in the future?

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V. Lesson Inputs: Week 4

● Augustine: The Student

As young boy and an adolescent

In his confession, St. Augustine tells about his student days and his attitudes to studying.
As a boy, he was advised why he had to study.

“I was told that it was right and proper for me as boy to pay attention to my teachers, so
that I should do well at my study of grammar and get on in the world. This was the way to
gain respect of others and win for myself what passes for wealth in the world. So I was sent
to school to learn to read. I was too small to understand what purpose it might serve and
yet, if I was idle at my studies, I was beaten for it, because beating was favored by
tradition.”

He enjoyed playing games and was punished by his teacher for doing such. He preferred to
play than to read, write and study as expected of him. He was in fact disobedient simply for the
love of games. As a boy he did not care for his lessons and disliked being forced to study.

He found the Greek language as a distasteful subject although he learned it as a child. He

loved Latin, under his teachers in literature. But the reason for the difficulty was the constant
violent threats and cruel punishments he was subjected to earn (Book I,14). But he learned Latin
without fear and simply by keeping his ears open as his nurse took care of him as baby, and
listened to the people who spoke to him and when he spoke him mind to them. He notes here, that
one learn better in “a free spirit of curiosity than under fear and compulsion” (Book I, 14).

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 Augustine also speaks of his misdemeanors as boy. He lied to his tutor and his parents and
deceived them because he wanted to play games or watch show and stage plays. He even stole
from his parent either greed or to get something to give to other boys in exchange for his favorite
toys. In the games, he often cheated so that he would win and yet he hated it when others cheated
him (Book I, 19). And yet, over above these childish ways, he disliked finding himself in the wrong.
Rather he found pleasure in the truth (Book I,20).

As an Adolescent, he was attracted by the theater because it reflects his own unhappy
plight. As he studied law, he had the ambition and determination to succeed He became the top of
the school of rhetoric which pleased him and filled him with conceit. He found friendship with the
“Wreckers” although he did not join outburst of violence.

It was him ambition to be a good speaker to gratify his vanity. Yet ta 19, when he was
required to read the books of Cicero, entitled Hortensius, all this all this “empty dreams suddenly
lost their charm and my heart began to throb with a bewildering passion for the wisdom of eternal
truth” (Book III, 4). The book inflamed in him the love for wisdom…”to search for it, purpose it,
hold it and embrace I firmly” (Book III,4). These words excited him and set him burning with fire,
and the only check to this blaze of enthusiasm was that they made no mention of the name of
Christ” (Book III, 4). This made him examine the Holy Scriptures and see the kind of books they
were. In his reading, they seemed “quite unworthy of comparison with the stately prose od Cicero.”
He accepted later, after his conversion, that that he “had too much conceit to accept their
simplicity and not enough insight to penetrate their depts.” (Book III, 5

● Augustine: The Teacher

During the space of his 19 to 28 years, he became a teacher of public speaking. He worked
For love of money (Book IV,2) and taught hi students the means on how to win debates, although
he did his best with honesty. At the same time, he was attracted to astrology and read many
scientific books. He studied philosophy (he read Aristotle’s Ten Categories at 20) and the liberal
arts. He said, “I read and understood by myself all the books that I could find on the so-called
liberal arts” and he did this for ambition and pleasure (Book IV,16). Later after his conversion, he
would pray to God: “What, then, was the value to me of my intelligence, which could take these
subjects in its stride, and those books, with their tangled problems, which I unraveled without the
help of any human tutor, when in the doctrine of your love I was lost in the most hideous error and
the vilest sacrilege?” (Book IV, 16)

He also got involved in the Manichean sec for 9 years. He thought that the leaders of the
sect could help him find the answers to his many questions of creation, meaning of life, love, God.
He comments after his conversion, “Manes dared to pose as teacher, sole authority, guide, and
leader of all whom he could convince of his theories” (Book V, 5). Yet while he was not so satisfied
with the writings of Manes, he stayed with the group with the hope that if he met Faustus, the
Bishop of the Manichees, he would answer all his queries: “they assure me that once Faustus had
arrived I had only to discuss them with him and made he would have no difficulty in giving me a
clear explanation of my queries and any other more difficult problems which I might put forward.”
And when he finally arrived, while finding him an agreeable and intelligent personality, he soon
discovered that

except for a rudimentary knowledge of literature, he had no claims to scholarship. He had

read some of Cicero’s speeches, one or two books Seneca, some poetry, and such books as had
been written in good Latin by members of his sect. Beside his daily practice as a speaker, this

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reading was the basis of his eloquence, which derived extra charm and plausibility from his
attractive personality and his ability to make good use of his mental powers.

After this meeting with Faustus, his interest in Manichaeism diminished: “the keen interest
which I had I Manichean doctrines was checked by this experience and my confidence in the other
teachers of the sect was further diminished when I saw that Faustus, of whom they spoke so much,
was obviously unstable to settle the numerous problems which troubled me.” Thus it was Faustus
himself who released him” from the trap in which I have been caught” (Book V, 7)

He then went to Rome to teach there rhetoric’s, not so much for higher fees and honor but
because he heard that the young students there were quieter, that discipline was stricter. This was
not true at Carthage where the students were beyond control and with disgrace behavior (Book V,
5) He was, however, disillusioned with them since they were unscrupulous and were unjust to their
teacher, He states: “For their warped and crooked minds I still hate students like these, but I love
them too, hoping to teach them to mend their ways, so that they many learn to love their studies
more than money…” In this moment, he did not part ways with the Manichees yet, although he was
no longer active with them.

When he had the opportunity, he transferred to Milan to be a teacher of literature and

elocution. It was here that he met Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan who received him like a father. He
was attracted to him, not at first as a teacher of truth but as a man of Kindness. After listening to
his homilies, especially his commentaries on Scripture texts, Augustine made up his mind to quit
the Manichees (Book V, 14).

VI. Learning activities:

1. In the life of Augustine, the “Theft of the Peas” is a very famous one,
What exactly is its point? And what stages of life of Augustine it was happened?

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2. What can you say about attitude/ character of Augustine when he was a Student?
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3. What can you say about attitude/ character of Augustine when he was a Teacher?
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4. What can you learn from Augustine when he was a Student?

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 5. What can you learn from Augustine when he was a Teacher?

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VII. Assessment:

Make a Journal Writing in this

Lesson

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 Work Sheet
(lesson 4)

Name: __________________________________ Score ____________

Grade& Section:___________________________ Date : ____________

Give one’s story of search for truth

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1. Do you think this lesson help you to be even more truthful?
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2. Do you believe that it is possible for a sinful person to change if it is not God's will? Yes
or No and why?
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