The older I get, the more I appreciate ancient writings.
There is something special about wisdom that has stood the test of time. Towering over many of the giants on whose shoulders we stand is the mighty Augustine of Hippo.
Augustine seems to have the ability to turn his hand to anything: sermons, letters, Bible commentaries, spiritual autobiography, basic and complex theology, and so much more.
As part of the Dead Preachers Society I have organised a reading day based on Augustine’s remarkable book on preaching On Christian Teaching.
It is a book I discovered a quarter of a century ago while doing post-graduate research on homiletics (the art of preaching). I love the way that Augustine approaches the subject of preaching by giving attention to both how Scripture is to be read and how it is to be preached.
Many preachers are very eager to communicate what they know but have forgotten the need to develop a rich receptivity to what God says in Scripture and how he says it. Augustine is also really helpful on the spiritual posture of the preacher, as one who is being transformed by the message of Scripture through an encouter with the God of love revealed in Scripture.
(Places are limited on the day (Tuesday 12th May 2026). Visit: www.seaford.life/preachers to to sign up.)
As part of my preparation for the day I am re-reading On Christian Teaching and some of the other things he has written. This includes revisiting the work for which Augustine is best known: his Confessions. There is some debate about whether Confessions is the best way to translate the title. It could equally well be translated ‘Witness of Testimony’. Whatever we call it, Confessions is a remarkable work that should be on every Christian’s bookshelves. It is a unique spiritual autobiography that tells Augustine’s story in a way that lets the reader into his inner world.
Augustine does this by writing his story as an extended meditative prayer. The story is breathed out as a prayer of confession, praise and devotion to the God who has rescued him from a self-aborbed and empty life.
I have read Confessions many times in different translations. At present I am reading a new translation by Sarah Ruden, who has translated a number of classic texts, but never before a sacred text. Ruden manages to capture the wild rawness of Augustine’s passionate devotion.
Here is a flavour of that, written as a young man in Carthage:
“I wasn’t in love yet, but I was in love with the prospect of being in love, and in my more latent need, I hated myself because that need wasn’t greater. I looked for something to love, lover of loving that I was, and hated my safety and my path free of mousetraps, since my real hunger was inside me, and was for more inward food — it was for you my God.”
This is what preachers must do: speak to the longings beneath our longings.
CS Lewis spoke about how we chase the wrong things in pursuit of what we really need.
“For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”
St. Augustine in His Study by Vittore Carpaccio (Public domain)