Among the series of biographical books written by Huberto Rohden, there are two, in particular, published between 1939 and 1940: Paul of Tarsus and Augustine, where the author does not seek to praise the great pioneer of the Gospel, nor the famous eminence of Augustine, as a spiritual disciple of Paul, but rather, to exalt the apotheosis of the one who inspired them: for whom the convert of Damascus lived, fought and died, as well as of the one that from the abyss, called Augustine to the highest pedestal; it happens that the apotheotic figure of Jesus in the life of both, it is compared only when the greatness of the sun is exalted in the wonders it produces on earth.
- Paul, a religious fanatic and staunch defender of the ritual formalism of the Mosaic law!
- Augustine, passionate cultist of materialism and carnal sensualism!
If these two authentic representatives of their schools found in Christianity the supreme ideal of life, strength in struggles, and consolation in death, it proves that in Christianity inhabits a stupendous spiritual reality; reality superior to any fanaticism, and to all seduction of the flesh.
If Paul sacrificed his pharisaic ideology on the altar of Golgotha's cross; if Augustine offered the holocaust of his impure passions on the altar of the Gospel - then, no man has the right to conceive that Christianity is just a beautiful theory, a past event or a religion for a small group of pious and segregated souls in life. No, he doesn't have that right! Christianity, just as it sprang from the soul of Jesus, is the most amazing spiritual reality, not only in the first century but in all the centuries to come in the history of mankind.
But this divine force that lives and throbs in Christianity only work in the human soul when it is taken in its plenitude, as it exists in the pages of the four Gospels.
Christianity in its integrity was the only historical rational event that has the power to create heroes of human greatness; it alone contains the divine energy of destroying all adverse powers and making a new universe of spiritual realities emerge within the soul.
And at the centre of this cosmos is, as the focus of light and energy, the “maximum commandment” of its author: the love of God manifested in human ethics. Any other events that are labelled Christianity, which moves from the centre and passes to the periphery of this sun of the evangelical planetary system, cause disastrous cataclysms in the Christian universe because it unbalances the cosmic forces and disturbs the harmony of true Christianity.
If Christendom has sinned against Christianity, its sin is to have torn out its soul, to have taken from its core the supreme law of the love of God and neighbour. And this sin is not compensated for by any other “virtue”, by any attempt to transfer, from the periphery to the centre, some other precept, however important, sublime and divine it may seem. Either mankind accepts Christianity as it sprang from the soul of Jesus or it must not profess another Christianity. It can create a "conditioned", Christianity, a Christianity from the East or the West, an ancient, medieval or modern Christianity, but, if it does, have the sincerity to say that this modality, if it is Christianity, is not CHRISTIANITY, and let it not commit the sacrilege of wanting to preach a subjective Christianity to the world, as being the true one.
If anything exists for which man can live and work, fight and suffer, satisfied and happy, it is the Gospel of redemption and love, which Jesus spread throughout the lands of Palestine to the ends of the planet.
After the integral man he was, there was never a man who fully embodied the soul of Christianity. But fortunately, there has never been a shortage of Christians who attain a high degree of spirit which lives and throbs in the pages of the Gospel.
Paul of Tarsus, after seeing his Pharisaic mosaicism in ruins can state with a full conscience: “I no longer live - Christ is the one who lives in me ... My life is Christ, and dying is profit for me… Of the full wisdom of Christ, I consider all the world's greatness to be garbage”.
Augustine, after the collapse of his proud paganism and the boredom of his sensual loves, draws from his soul a shipwrecked cry launched on the beach: “How late I loved you, O old and ever new Beauty, how late I loved you! ... you made us for you Lord and our heart is restless until it rests in you”.
Paul and Augustine, although of different personalities made great efforts to realize the luminous essence of Christianity in their lives, leaving a legacy of faith and ideal for humanity to follow in them, the ascensional journey towards Christianization.
Augustine, son of Monica, is a spiritual disciple of the man of Tarsus, so much so that a Pauline epistle gave him the ultimate impetus for definitive conversion, and throughout his life, he was a devoted follower of the pioneer of the Gospel. But, both in conversion and in subsequent apostolic activity, it would be difficult to find points of contact between the two, despite having taken Christianity seriously; for it, they lived, fought and died. But each of these human crystals reflects differently the “light of the world that illuminates all man”. Red is still genuine light because it is not green or blue, since it is the result of the decomposition of white, colourless light, synthesis and plenitude of all the colours of the rainbow. Every sincere Christian is an authentic reflection of the great divine focus that has emerged on humanity, but each Christian represents the sun of Christianity through the particular prism of its character, genius, education, the environment in which it lives, the ideologies that shaped its intelligence and heart, placing it in a certain perspective to contemplate the sun of Christian revelation. The combination of all the colours and shades of Christian souls is what represents the complete sunlight, the “mystical body” of Jesus, the sun, the integral light.
Contemplating, studying, analyzing the Christianity of this or that sincere disciple contributes greatly to forming a more perfect idea of Jesus, and thus, a better comprehension that Christianity is a spiritual organism that is both rigid and elastic. Its rigidity guarantees it, in the light of providence and divine authority, the victorious resistance against all the assaults of its enemies. Its elasticity ensures perfect adaptability to any historical and ideological environments, without sacrificing the character of its spirit.
If Christianity lacked the necessary rigidity, it would be in danger of being destroyed, and if it lacked the proper elasticity, it would end up isolating itself as an inert anomaly in the midst of a living and continuously evolving world; it would cease to be a living and dynamic religion, disappearing in a basement of a museum.
It would be difficult to find in the history of primitive Christianity a man who, as perfectly as Augustine, has symbolized this elastic rigidity of the Christian religion. Even Paul does not represent this admirable attunement of two elements so harmoniously, at first glance antagonistic and irreconcilable. In Paul, the first element prevails over the second, due to his Israeli education and the circumstances in which his life unfolds.
Every healthy organism, endowed with sufficient vitality assimilates from the substances it receives, only those elements that harmonize with the peculiar nature of its specific vital principle, repelling or eliminating at the same time heterogeneous and unfit substances to serve as a building material.
A sick or decrepit organism isolates itself, refuses to receive foreign elements, because it does not feel strong enough to incorporate them into its Self, weakening itself, losing its primitive elasticity and ending up petrifying itself in the inertia of its rigidity.
All periods of intolerant repulsion of others' ideas have been times of stagnation or spiritual decay, while all times marked by an intrepid and courageous assimilation of new and good elements have been times of expansion and fruitful prosperity.
The political-social regimes of almost all countries of the globe were convinced in the first half of the twentieth century, that their life and prosperity depend on the assimilation of new ideas, ideas that in vain would look for in the legislation of the past centuries. Who would have thought in 1900 that, within a few decades, the most markedly traditional and capitalist-motivated countries would create laws in which there is a high dose of socialist spirit? It was the conservation instinct itself that such a change produced since this careful socialization was the only possibility to preserve society itself from totalitarianism and dictatorships. It is evolutionism in the social field. Or adapt - or perish. Either assimilate the assimilable - or languish for lack of organic assimilation. The injection of sensible and constructive socialism was the only way to effectively vaccinate the social organism and immunize it against the lethal virus in the totalitarian and dictatorial forms of certain political regimes.
Often, the lessons we receive from the wisdom of our enemies are more profitable than those taught by friends. The enemy generally knows weaknesses better, and above all, it has the sincerity to say them with its real name. Austere truth is always preferable to a subtle lie.
What part of the political-social world is doing intelligently, it could also accomplish, within the proper norms, within the spiritual life! Would it not be possible to harmonize tradition with evolution, as is happening in many forms?
Why couldn't today's Catholic accept the ideology of the greatest personality in the fourth and fifth-century churches?
Why should we not reclothe old truths with new clothes? Wasn't that what Jesus said? Why would we propose to the intellectuals of modern society the truths of Christianity as if they were naive catechism children, without any spiritual autonomy?
The fact that we take advantage of the ideology of our enemies and enrich our own ideas with it already supposes a remarkable elasticity of spirit and great plenitude of personality. The weak, stingy spirit, unsure of itself, seeks the salvation of its ideas in fanatical and intolerant statements, in absolute and unconditional rejection of any mentalities with which this spirit is not in tune.
- The open and sensible spirit evolves, embraces and seeks the truth within its own error.
- The shy and foolish spirit is exclusivist and sees absurd errors only beyond the borders of the truth itself.
Integral truth is rare - as rare is a total error. Truth only in God, and error only where the last spark of divinity expires. But where would that be? Who would have the temerity to categorically draw the line between integral truth and absolute error?
Given this, one comprehends the serene acceptance and the loving indulgence which is found in spirits highly attuned to divinity.
Both they and Paul know that “our knowledge is imperfect; our prophesying is imperfect”. They know that the current knowledge is neither light nor intense darkness, but a gloom, and they accept the idea that what man knows, is just a drop of water in the ocean of his ignorance. And Augustine, after fully accepting Christianity, never failed to take advantage of all the assimilable elements that paganism and his separation or split in religious matters, provided him.
Almost 15 centuries before Darwin, Augustine already defended the Theory of Evolutionism and expounded these ideas in his writings. He was not afraid to descend into the abyss of the universe and pluck new ideas from the unknown, even if disconcerting. He speaks of a "germ universe". He states that the biblical text: "God created everything at once" meaning that in that one act everything in the universe was finalized, not only the sky, with the sun, moon and stars; not only the earth and the abysses but everything that was hidden in the germinating force of the elements, long before, during the cosmic periods, it developed visible, materialized. As a consequence, the work of the six days does not mean a chronological succession, but a logical disposition, where man is part of that germ creation. God created him just as it created the herb before it existed. 1
To create a being before it exists is to create it implicitly, in germ, before it explicitly exists, in a definitive form. To profess such advanced ideas, in the obscurity of the first centuries, in a theological environment that had never considered such an idea, is proof of courage and freedom of spirit. In this sense, certainly, the old and serious Saint Jerome of Stridon, there in his cave in Bethlehem, would have shaken his head, reading such stratospheric ideologies from his African colleague!
Some consider the three decades of paganism and Manichaeism - a doctrine according to which the world is divided into two principles, good (God) and evil (Devil) - of Augustine as a simple product of his vehement sensualism, and who read only his autobiography “Confessions”, has this imperfect and one-sided idea. However, whoever carefully studies his works; whoever can hear the imperceptible echoes of certain thoughts, ends up convincing itself that Augustine's most intense struggle was not that of the spirit against the flesh, but the painful conflict between autonomy and authority. And this is the most distressing of all spiritual tragedies that turn the intimate lives of many thinkers of humanity into a battlefield.
The more the man thinks, the more the autonomy of his personality is accentuated, the more the contours of his Self are defined. The obtuse man, the mediocre man, the living dead, who uses more emotion than reason is semi-conscious of his own personality, and for this reason, he himself is not fully conscious of his spiritual freedom and autonomy. But the man used to project the lights of his intelligence in the world of externalities and his inner world gradually becomes conscious of his personality and the value of that personality, reaching the heights of his personal autonomy.
Authority, however, requires obedience and subjection, not for known reasons, but simply to an order received. This order may or may not coincide with the known reason, and it may even contradict it. In the latter case, a conflict between autonomy and authority arises. The triumph of this is necessarily the defeat of the former, and vice versa.
Augustine, with powerful intelligence and a strong sense of personality, could not help feeling an intense personal autonomy. And it was precisely this yearning for intellectual freedom, within the Christian environment, that led him to embrace Manichaeism, the rationalist Christianity, in which he lived for nine years.
And yet, he later becomes an ardent defender of authority, and not just a theoretical defender, but also a holder of higher mandates.
How do autonomy and authority harmonize in him? And, first of all, what led him to admit what seemed to destroy his personal autonomy? Has a man as personal as Augustine depersonalized himself? Who sacrificed his freedom and spiritual independence on the altar of authority?
It is precisely here, in the supreme zenith of his intensity, that the drama of that great soul reaches the deepest nadir of his spiritual anguish. Whoever does not follow Augustine in the darkness of this inner agony, will never know the true author of “Confessions”, “The City of God”. Whoever knew how to harmonize these two antitheses - autonomy and authority - and build on it the thesis of his Christianity, should have powerful building energies within the Self.
If man were only intelligence, pure reason, perhaps he would do much at the top of his rational, independent, autonomous ascent, where the rock descends in a vertical line to a bottomless abyss. Lucifer, pure intelligence, seems to have followed this autonomous philosophy.
However, the man is, first of all, hungry for love and happiness, a totalitarian being who does not rest in a partial realization, but longs for the complete, integral, definitive realization of his personality.
The centre of his personality reflects beatitude.
And the amulet of this beatitude is called love.
If autonomy, empowered to the infinite, could give this beatitude of love, Augustine would certainly be the greatest revolutionary and the most violent destroyer of authority.
But he was too smart not to realize that the desire for unbridled autonomy would eventually lead him to the lonely glaciers of proud personal freedom, but never to the gentle communion of souls, to an assembly of spirits, to a church of God's children. ...
Man does not live only on ideas - but also ideals ...
Not just intelligence - but also the heart ...
And Augustine, always more Platonic than Aristotelian, under the impulse of the heart, subordinated autonomy to authority. He did not sacrifice his Self, he did not abdicate his personality, but he disciplined it in favour of the community.
He associated the Self with his fellow man, and thus, in a communion of ideas and ideals, he followed the directives of God - manifesting in himself the idea and ideal of community ... “Wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there I will be among them”.
And so, it was that Augustine, after renouncing human love, fell in love with another, superhuman love, and, as with the first female love, he had consecrated the energies of his ardent youth, so he dedicated to the last, divine love, all the potentialities of his personality.
After the “Confessions”, the rebellion of the flesh against the spirit is no longer perceived in his works, but they continue, through all his writings, until the end of his life, the cries of intelligence, kept in prudent subjection by the will. And these claims only expired on the day and at the time when autonomy and authority merged in the symphony of Divinity.
All spiritual fruitfulness, all inner enrichment is invariably born out of a problem, a conflict of contrasts that call for harmonization. That is why all the great deeds of the spirit are the result of a deep and painful tragicity, for without resistance there is no evolution. And great men are almost always martyrs for their own mission. Static, flat, mediocre souls, without dark abysses or luminous heights, without dynamics or passions are generally infertile, sterile because they are souls without high tension, without potentiality, without the necessary voltage to cause great movements in the society, and often serve as an obstacle to higher spirits in their great achievements.
With the extinction of the “problem” factor, the perennial source of humanity's vital energies would be stagnant.
From the centripetal force of attraction, counterbalanced by the centrifugal force of repulsion, the harmony of the universe is born.
The great cosmic symphony is the result of two contrary energies wisely harmonized. Similarly, from the centripetal power of autonomous selfishness and the centrifugal power of altruism from obedience, spiritual beauty arises, which is the attunement of inner contrasts.
* * *
Thousands of exaltations to Christianity have been written since, in the second century, Justin Martyr displayed to the emperor Hadrian the defence of the Gospels, with the main documents of the Christian faith, as revelations of divine truth, but none of these verbal exaltations is equivalent to the real exaltation which, according to the Acts of the Apostles, Matthew, Mark, John and Luke (Quadratus), represented the fraternal charity of the Christians of the first century.
Augustine, as a sincere Christian, could not fail to place charity at the centre of his life, as the soul of Christianity.
“I give you a new commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you ... therefore, the world must know that you are my disciples: in loving one another.”
“If I spoke the language of men and angels, but I didn't have charity, I would be nothing more than a loud metal and a ringing bell. And if I had the gift of prophecy, if I penetrated all the mysteries, if I had all the knowledge, if I had a faith capable of transporting mountains, but I didn't have charity - I would be nothing. If I distributed all my possessions to the poor, if I surrendered my body to the fire, but I did not have charity - this would be of no use to me. Charity is patient, charity is benign, charity is not jealous, it is not ambitious, it is not proud, it is not self-interested, it does not irritate, it does not hold a grudge, it does not support injustice, but it rejoices with the truth; everything supports, everything believes, everything waits, everything suffers - charity never ends ... For now, faith, hope and charity remain, and among these three - the greatest of them, however, is charity” ...
It is through these words of Paul and other great disciples that the true Christian guides his life, according to Jesus' messages.
Augustine, the “doctor of grace”, as he is called, could well be called “doctor of charity”. Since he had embraced Christianity, he wanted, first of all, to embrace the soul of Christianity. For what would a soulless Christianity do for him? A Christianity that lacked the will of Jesus - that Christianity would be nothing more than pseudo-Christianity. Too heavy had been the sacrifice that Augustine had made. Only an integral Christianity would fill the immense vacuum that in his soul had left him the complete and definitive renunciation of the satisfactions of his pagan and sensual life.
What Augustine wrote about the love of God manifested in human charity is the most beautiful, profound and sublime in all Christian literature, after the divine word of the Scriptures ... and he lived his ideas!
And how could a man live the love of God without living charity for others? How could one love God without also loving him in his human personification? “Let us make man in our image and likeness!” ... True charity is the most difficult of all virtues. It is the virtue of heroes, of perfect souls, the “bond of perfection”, in the words of Paul. They will enter into the “eternal life” - says Jesus - only the children of charity, and will go to the “eternal torture” all the children of the lack of charity. The charity or the lack of charity that the man does to the “least of his brothers”, he himself will do it to him. Hungry, thirsty, naked, imprisoned, sick, refugee men without a homeland and a home, victims of the torments of the body and the martyrdom of the spirit - these are the “smallest” among the brothers of men. It is, therefore, necessary to love the supreme divine perfection in the most chaotic human imperfection. It is necessary to see through the lowest condition of human life, the purest flashes of Divinity. Of such heroism, only the Christlike man is truly the possessor, the man who incinerated the Self in the sacred pyre of the love of God, the man who made himself, a voluntary, spontaneous and irrevocable sacrifice to Divinity.
Augustine, who, from experience, knew and lived his human loves, also knew how to love in a Christlike way. On the walls of his refectory in Hippo, he had a caption recorded, in huge characters, that any guests were strictly prohibited from the smallest non-charitable allusion to absent people.
In the fierce struggle against other ideologies, he never failed to be guided by the classic motto: “Fight the errors and love the wanderers.”
His brief and famous sentence: “Discovering the truth even in error”, was born out of the sincere desire not to offend the opponent and to believe in his good faith.
If it is possible, in our day, to make the individual and society a Christlike ensemble in harmony, it will only be possible under the motto of charity ...
“And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”
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1) - Which came first: the chicken or the egg?
This is a question that has been asked for
generations, and according to what is understood, it remains a great mystery
for materialistic humanity. It does not matter in which circle of thinkers it occurs; in
academic centres or relaxed conversations. Some indicate, according to DNA
studies, that the embryo is present in the egg, and consequently, it came
first, or the other way around, that the chicken came first. Others affirm the
evolutionary process because the dinosaurs also laid eggs.
Aristotle, on the other hand, stated that:
“there could not have been a first egg to give rise to the birds, nor could
there have been a first bird to give rise to the egg”. Therefore, the famous
Greek philosopher and polymath already glimpsed the truth that what was born
first was exactly the idea of the
chicken's existence. It was thought of by the creative powers, as well as
everything that exists in the universe. Nothing happened haphazardly, but it
was caused, thought, created, regardless of probable evolutionary processes
that took place over the centuries.
Srinivasa Ramanujam, one of the greatest
geniuses in mathematics, stated: “An equation means nothing to me unless it
expresses a thought from God.” And Einstein, another brilliant scientist, was
emphatic when he said that: “Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit
of science is convinced that a spirit is manifested in the laws of the
Universe, which is far superior to that of man”.
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