Celebrate St. Augustine, Benedict XVI spoke of the saint's interior conversion, calling it "one of the greatest" in Christian history. He recalled how his trip last year to pay homage to the mortal remains of Augustine was meant to "demonstrate the admiration and reverence of the entire Catholic Church toward St. Augustine, and my own personal devotion and recognition of a figure with whom I feel I have close ties to due to the part he has played in my theological life, in my life as a priest and a pastor.
Recalling Augustine's own retelling of his conversion in the "Confessions," the Holy Father said that the process is best "described as a journey that remains a true example for each one of us.
Benedict XVI characterized the first phase as a "gradual approach to Christianity," since Augustine was a "passionate seeker of the truth. He explained: "Philosophy, and especially Platonic philosophy, led him closer to Christ by revealing to him the existence of the Logos, or creative reason. The books of the philosophers showed him the existence of 'reason' from which the whole world is derived, but did not tell him how to reach this Logos, which seemed so inaccessible.
Paul, in the faith of the Catholic Church, that he came to a fuller understanding. He understood that those words were specifically meant for him. They came from God, through the Apostle, and showed him what he had to do in that moment. In fact he has come near us, becoming one of us," the Holy Father said. Only a God who made himself 'touchable,' one of us, was a God to whom one could pray, for whom and with whom one could live.
Benedict XVI said a last step, or "third conversion" in the journey, "led [Augustine] to ask God for forgiveness every day of his life.
