Feast of Saint Augustine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church – Commemoration of St. Hermes
ST. AUGUSTINE – BISHOP / DOCTOR
It was the combined efforts of two saints who had the greatest effects on the life of one of the great Doctors of the Church Saint Augustine of Hippo. Augustine’s mother Saint Monica played a major behind the scenes role in his conversion, while Saint Ambrose was on the front line with Augustine, who had become a great skeptic, teaching, influencing and converting him.
Augustine was born in Tagaste in what is today Algeria on November 13, 354. By the time he was 30 he was preaching rhetoric, interspersed with Manichean heresy, at the University of Milan. It was there he met St. Ambrose and sat in on his lectures where he was enthralled with Ambrose’s explanation of Sacred Scripture. In 356 Augustine heard a voice while he was embroiled in abandoned tears of helplessness searching for answers. The child-like voice chanted, “Take and read.” Without thinking Augustine opened the Bible to the words of Saint Paul in Romans 13:13-14 which said, “Let us walk becomingly as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in debauchery and wantonness, not in strife and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and as for the flesh, take no thought for its lusts.” He was so moved that he asked Ambrose if he could be baptized and then immediately told his mother Monica that he wanted to be baptized. Both she and Ambrose were delighted beyond belief. Monica firmly insisted that in order to be in full union with the Church he had to abandon his Manichean beliefs and forsake living with his girlfriend and their three children illegitimately conceived. Augustine agreed, was baptized and then buried his mother the same year. Shortly after Monica’s death he returned to Africa and was ordained a priest at the age of 36.
During this time he dedicated full time to righting and writing the wrongs he had wrought to so many through his Manichean ideas. At the young age of 41 Augustine was consecrated the Bishop of Hippo where he preached and served the people for the rest of his life, defending the Church against all types of heresies. Even though a bishop, he still lived in community with fellow priests and wrote constantly beginning with his major works Confessions which was basically a catechism for all catechumens along with his great work Christian Doctrine.
In 410, as the Goth Alaric was laying siege to Rome Augustine wrote his most famous opus – City of God. His great words, “Too late have I loved You, O Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! Our hearts were made for You, O Lord, and they are restless until they rest in You” show how God became the end-all and be-all in his life which ended at the age of 76 on August 28, 430 as the Vandals were storming the gates of Hippo. To preserve his body from the Vandals, the Augustinians stole him away to Sardinia where he was laid to rest, and later transferred to Pavia. Though Augustine’s works were appreciated during his lifetime, it wasn’t until after his death that his words really took root and was celebrated as a Doctor of the Church from the eighth century on, becoming official in the eleventh century. Today St. Augustine is revered as one of the greatest and learned scholars of the Church. His conversion proves the power of God’s love and the power of the Word of God.
Dom Gueranger, Liturgical Year – St. Augustine
The greatest Doctor and most humble, Augustine rises acclaimed heaven which no conversion sinner excited as his ineffable joy, celebrated by the church where his work leave for centuries full light power, price, free of divine grace.
Since the interview was ecstatic Ostia one day the vestibule of heaven, God completed his triumphs in tears son of Monique and sanctity of Ambrose. Far from the famous cities where abused so many seductions, the rhetorician old longs to feed his soul with the simplicity of the sacred Scriptures in the silence of solitude. But grace, who broke the double chain encircling his mind and heart, keeps him on the sovereign rights; it is in the consecration of priests vowing Augustine forgetting oneself that Wisdom consumes with his alliance: Wisdom that says “love one for herself, not liking that because of it rest and life “. At this summit where brought the divine mercy, hear him pour out his heart:
“I loved you before, so ancient and so new beauty! I loved you later! And you were me; and me out of myself, looking for you everywhere … I questioned the earth, and she said, “I am not what you are looking for”; and every living substance that carries the earth even made my confession. I asked the sea and its depths, and what life in their depths; and the answer was: “We are not your God looking over us.” I questioned the winds and breezes; and said air with its inhabitants: “Anaximenes is mistaken; I am not God.” I questioned the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars, “We either, we are not the God you seek.” All you who you press the doors of my senses, everything that you told me not to be my God, tell me something about him; and their beauty that attracted my research with my desire, they shouted with one voice: “It is he who made us” . – Silence in the air, water, land! Silence in heaven! Silence in man the soul itself! It goes beyond his own thought: beyond any language, whether of the flesh or of the angel, means himself one whose creatures speak; where the stop sign and image, and figured any vision, reveals the eternal Wisdom … My deaf ears heard a powerful voice; your glare forced the entry of my blind eyes; your scent sparked my breath, and it is to you that I aspire, I am hungry and thirsty because I tasted you; I trembled to your touch, I burn to enter your rest: when I am united with you all myself, the pain and the work will have ended for me “.
Another work that the task of the private correspondence of his attentions to God for Augustine was to end only with life: the struggles for truth who had delivered his soul on all battlefields selected from this time by the father of lies. Fighting ended with as many wins where we do not know which to admire most, as others have said, the science of the sacred books, the power of the dialectic or the art of speaking well; but in which trumps all the fullness of charity. Nowhere better displayed the unity of this divine charity mentioned by the Spirit to the Church, and that the same heart where it draws its inflexibility to keep even the smallest iota rights of the Lord God, overflowing with ineffable gentleness for so unfortunate that still ignore:
“Whether you are tough, those who do not know what work is to arrive at the truth, to avoid the error. They’ll be tough, those who do not know how rare it is, how much it costs, achieve overcome in the serenity of a pious soul ghosts of the senses. They’ll be tough, those who do not know how hard heals the eye of the inner man, to fix the sun, the sun of justice; those who do not know what sighs and groans which it happens in something, to understand God. They will be hard and finally, those who have never experienced seduction like that where you’re wrong … For me, tossed by vain imaginations which my mind was looking, I shared your misery so long and cried, I can not in any way be hard on you “.
St. Hermes, Martyr
One of the oldest Roman martyrs. Early in the fourth century, the city of Antium in the Italian Lazio had a basilica built in his honor. Which was very rare in the years that immediately followed the persecution. We also know that he was a Roman slave, freed, and he died a martyr.
“Saint Hermes belongs to the primitive layer of the Roman sanctoral. His testimony to the cemetery on the Via Salaria Basilla old is enshrined in the Depositio Martyrum 354 and the Hieronymian. The Gospel 645 agrees with the Gregorian and Gelasian to give sacramental form his party, which has always been celebrated since. “
Dom Gueranger, Liturgical Year
Salute a holy person reported by the most ancient monuments of the Roman Church as already in possession to date of a cult that has survived the centuries. Hermes, Roman magistrate, went to Christ under Trajan testimony of martyrdom. The crypt built, less than half a century after the death of the Apostles, to receive his precious remains, is famous for its majestic proportions and scale unusual in underground cemeteries. It was her sister Theodora who collected the hands of Balbina, daughter of tribune Quirinus, the venerable Chains of Blessed Peter.
Thursday in the Eleventh Week after Pentecost – Mass Propers
Feast of Saint Augustine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church – Commemoration of St. Hermes
Double/White Missa “In medio Ecclesiae”
INTROIT: Ecclesiasticus 15: 5
In the midst of the Church the Lord opened his mouth: and filled him with the spirit of wisdom and understanding: He clothed him with a robe of glory.. (Ps. 91: 2) It is good to give praise to the Lord: and to sing to Thy Name, O Most High. v. Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
COLLECT
Give ear to our prayers, O almighty God, and, by the intercession of blessed Augustine, Thy confessor and bishop, graciously grant the effect of Thine accustomed mercy to those in whom Thou dost encourage a strong trust in the kindness which is their hope. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God
Forever and ever.
R.Amen.
Commemoration of St. Hermes
Let us pray. God, Who didst strengthen blessed Hermes, Thy martyr, with the virtue of constancy in his suffering, grant us, in imitation of him, to despise the prosperity of the world for love of Thee, and not to fear worldly adversity.
EPISTLE: 2 Timothy 4: 1-8
Lesson from the Epistle of blessed Paul the Apostle to Timothy. Dearly beloved, I charge thee before God and Jesus Christ, Who shall judge the living and the dead, by His coming, and His Kingdom. Preach the word: be instant in season: reprove, entreat, rebuke in all patience, and doctrine. For there shall be a time, when they will not endure sound doctrine; but according to their own desires they will heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears, and will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, but will be turned unto fables. But be thou vigilant, labor in all things, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill thy ministry. Be sober. For I am even now ready to be sacrificed; and the time of my dissolution is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the Faith. As to the rest, there is laid up for me a crown of justice, which the Lord, the just Judge, will render to me in that day; and not only to me, but to them also that love His coming. Thanks be to God.
GRADUAL: Psalm 36: 30-31
The mouth of the just shall meditate wisdom and his tongue shall speak judgment. V. The law of his God is in his heart: and his steps shall not be supplanted. Alleluia, alleluia. V. (Ps. 88: 21) I have found David my servant: with my holy oil I have anointed him. Alleluia.
GOSPEL: Matthew 5: 13-19
At that time Jesus said to His disciples: “You are the salt of the earth: but if the salt lose its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? It is good for nothing any more but to be cast out, and to be trodden by men. You are the light of the world. A city seated on a mountain can not be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but upon a candlestick, that it may shine to all that are in the house; so let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father Who is in Heaven. Do not think that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. For, amen I say unto you, till Heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall not pass of the law till all be fulfilled. He therefore that shall break one of these least commandments, and shall so teach men, shall be called the least in the kingdom of Heaven: but he that shall do and teach, he shall be called great in the kingdom of Heaven.
OFFERTORY: Psalm 92: 15
The just shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall be multiplied like the cedar that is in Libanus.
SECRET
May the loving prayers of Augustine, Thy bishop, not be wanting to us, O Lord, to commend our gifts and ever to obtain pardon for us. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God…
Commemoration Secret for St. Hermes
We offer Thee, O Lord, the sacrifice of praise in commemoration of Thy saints; grant, we beseech Thee, that what hath conferred glory on them may profit us unto salvation. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God…
PREFACE Common Preface
It is truly meet and just, right and for our salvation that we should at all times and in all places, give thanks unto Thee, O holy Lord, Father almighty, everlasting God: through Christ our Lord. Through Whom the Angels praise Thy Majesty, the Dominations worship it, the Powers stand in awe. The Heavens and the Heavenly hosts together with the blessed Seraphim in triumphant chorus unite to celebrate it. Together with them we entreat Thee, that Thou mayest bid our voices also to be admitted, while we say in lowly praise:
COMMUNION: Luke 12: 42
A faithful and wise steward, whom the Lord set over His family; to give them their measure of wheat in due season.
POSTCOMMUNION
That Thy sacrifices may give us health, O Lord, may blessed Augustine, Thy bishop and illustrious doctor, we beseech Thee, act as our intercessor. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God…
Commemoration Postcommunion for St. Hermes
Let us pray. Filled with heavenly blessings, O Lord, we beseech Thy mercy that, by the intercession of blessed Hermes, Thy martyr, we may feel the salutary effects of that which we humbly perform. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God Forever and ever. R. Amen.
Saint Augustine: “The Doctor of Grace”
Brilliant author of the City of God, the wise and inspirational Saint Augustine. His greatness for Holy Mother Church can be attributed to the combined efforts of two saints; two who had the greatest effects on the life of Augustine of Hippo. For indeed his conversion and eventual triumphs were due to his mother Saint Monica working behind the scenes, so to speak, in praying relentlessly for bringing him back to the Faith and Saint Ambrose, the mighty Doctor of the Church who was on the front line with the fiesty Augustine, unafraid to take on the challenges of this great skeptic.
Augustine was born in Tagaste in what is today Algeria on November 13, 354. By the time he was 30 he was preaching rhetoric, interspersed with Manichean heresy, at the University of Milan. It was there he met St. Ambrose and sat in on his lectures where he was enthralled with Ambrose’s explanation of Sacred Scripture.
Two years later, in 356 Augustine heard a voice while he was embroiled in abandoned tears of helplessness searching for answers. The child-like voice chanted, “Take and read.” Without thinking Augustine opened the Bible to the words of Saint Paul in Romans 13:13-14 which said, “Let us walk becomingly as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in debauchery and wantonness, not in strife and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and as for the flesh, take no thought for its lusts.” He was so moved that he asked Ambrose if he could be baptized and then immediately told his mother Monica that he wanted to be baptized. Both she and Ambrose were delighted beyond belief. Monica firmly insisted that in order to be in full union with the Church he had to abandon his Manichean beliefs and forsake living with his girlfriend and their three children illegitimately conceived. Augustine agreed, and on Holy Saturday evening in 387 he was baptized. Monica’s long-suffering prayers had been answered and, later that year, while waiting to sail back to Northern Africa from Ostia in Italy, Monica’s everlasting ship came in and carried her off to the eternal seas of the Beatific Vision. Augustine buried his beloved mother and returned to Africa where he settled in Hippo, selling all his possessions which he gave to the poor and desolate and founded a monastery in Tagaste, the place of his birth.
His son Adeodatus died in 389 and two years after that the populace, inspired by vox populi acclaimed the ordination of this former sinner. Augustine dutifully became a priest at the age of 36 and, while helping others and preaching, and seeking to live the monastic life – his first love, he dedicated full time to righting and writing the wrongs he had wrought to so many through his Manichean ideas. Like Paul who had been Saul, Augustine became a crusader against the heresies of the times, most notably Manichaeism, Donatism, and Pelagianism.
At the young age of 41 Augustine was consecrated the Bishop of Hippo where he preached and served the people for the rest of his life, defending the Church against all types of heresies. Even though a bishop, he still lived in community with fellow priests and wrote constantly beginning with his major works Confessions which was basically a catechism for all catechumens along with his great work De Doctrina Chrisiana – “Of Christian Doctrine.”
In 410, as the Goth Alaric was laying siege to Rome, Augustine wrote his most famous opus – City of God, the history of Christian philosophy which has stood the test of time in influencing Western Culture both in the Church and the world. His great words, “Too late have I loved You, O Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! Our hearts were made for You, O Lord, and they are restless until they rest in You” show how God became the end-all and be-all in his life which ended at the age of 76 on August 28, 430 as the Vandals were storming the gates of Hippo.
To preserve his body from the Vandals, the Augustinians stole him away to Sardinia where he was laid to rest, and later transferred to Pavia. Though Augustine’s works were appreciated during his lifetime, it wasn’t until after his death that his words really took root and was celebrated as a Doctor of the Church from the eighth century on, becoming official in the eleventh century. Some of his other noted works are Enchiridion and De Trinitate.
Other than the Angelic Doctor Saint Thomas Aquinas, St. Augustine is considered the greatest single intellect ever in Holy Mother Church. St. Monica and St. Ambrose realized the treasure God had provided in this man who first turned his back on Our Lord until he realized only too well that he would remain restless, totally restless, until he rested and trusted solely in God.
Today St. Augustine is revered as one of the greatest and learned scholars of the Church and is given the title the “Doctor of Grace.” His conversion proves the power of God’s love and the power of the Word of God.
Office – Matins before 1960: Lesson i
The Lesson is taken from the Book of Ecclesiasticus / Chap. 3, 22-26
Seek not out the things that are above thee, neither search the things that are above thy strength. But what God hath commanded thee, think thereon alway, and be not curious concerning the diversity of his works. For it is not necessary for thee to see with thine eyes the things that are in secret. Search not too much into unnecessary matters, and be not curious concerning the diversity of his works, for more things are shewn unto thee than men understand. For many are deceived by their guesses concerning them, and a vain opinion hath overthrown their judgment.
The Lord possessed me in the beginning, or ever the earth was, when there were no fountains abounding with water; * Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth.
When he prepared the heavens, I was there, present with him, forming all things.
Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth.
Lesson ii Chap. 3, 27-30
A stubborn heart shall fare evil at the last, and he that loveth danger shall perish therein. An heart that entereth on a double way, shall not have success, and he whose heart is corrupt shall stumble therein. An obstinate heart shall be laden with sorrows, and the wicked man shall heap sin upon sin. In the congregation of the proud there is no remedy, for the plant of wickedness hath taken root there, and they shall not know it.
I alone have compassed the circuit of heaven, and walked in the bottom of the deep, and in every people and nation have I gotten myself a possession; And by mine own power have I trodden under my feet the hearts of both the high and the low.
St. Augustine – Madonna and Child
Lesson iii Chap. 3, 31-34
The heart of the prudent will understand wisdom, and the ear of the good will listen to wisdom with all eagerness. A wise and understanding heart will refrain from sin, and will work righteousness, and have success therein. Water will quench a flaming fire, and alms are an antidote against sins. God looketh upon him which giveth. He is mindful of him hereafter, and when he faileth, he shall find a stay.
Send Holy Wisdom out of thy heavens, O Lord, and from the Throne of thy Glory, to be present and labour with me. That I may ever know what is pleasing unto thee.
That I may ever know what is pleasing unto thee.
…
St. Augustine ora pro nobis!
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