Despite joyful Christmas cards and shopping euphoria, Advent is supposed to be a penitential season of prayer, fasting and almsgiving — just like Lent. Accordingly, my book club chose to read St. Augustine’s “Confessions” for December.
I very much wanted to be assigned this book again, because — I confess! — I never read it when it was assigned to me the first time, in Theo 101 my freshman year. How ironic that I neglected to read the one book that could have possibly shed some light into my life as I was entering into my darkest time away from God.
I do remember my professor (who, providentially, became my confirmation sponsor five years later) reading aloud one of the mot beautiful, and profound, passages of the “Confessions”:
Late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient, and so new. Late have I loved you! You were within me but I was outside myself, and there I sought you! In my weakness I ran after the beauty of the things you have made — the things which would have no being unless they existed in you! You have called, you have cried, and you have pierced my deafness. You have radiated forth, you have shined out brightly, and you have dispelled my blindness. You have sent forth your fragrance, and I have breathed it in, and I long for you. I have tasted you, and I hunger and thirst for you. You have touched me, and I ardently desire your peace. Amen.
Amen is right! Finally reading this book was a very cathartic experience for me, as it expressed some of my thoughts and feelings better than I ever could have. It brought to mind years of pain and misery without God, but it also made me more grateful than ever for my reunion with Him and my life with Him since then. His mercy endures forever!
The other day, as I was doing a religion lesson with Boo Boo, we were talking about actual sin (mortal and venial sin), which we choose to commit. St. Joseph’s Catechism explained that mortal sin “drives Our Lord out of the life of the one who commits it.”
Boo Boo looked at me in uncharacteristic seriousness and asked me, “Mama, have you ever driven Jesus out of your life?”
Though a bit surprised, I answered him truthfully, and then had a chance to talk about my conversion and eventual choice to live a life of grace, with the help of God. I know with a passionate and extreme person like him — and like myself, and like St. Augustine — it’s never too soon to talk about the good and bad choices that lay ahead of him, and the constant availability of God’s mercy and forgiveness. And like St. Monica, I have a feeling I’m going to be spending some serious time praying for our eldest son.