Augustine of Hippo is our founder and the father of an extensive Religious Family that follows his Rule, his teachings and his way of life. In these pages we approach his biography, his sensitivity, his way of life and his proposals to men and women of all times.
Yes, they began their journey, which was not easy. Just good wishes are not enough. When people who have lived independently come together to form one body, they must suffer a lot. They are stones that must be polished by rubbing against each other. Of course, those who try it in religious life have God’s help. Or, better, God himself is in charge of modeling them according to what he wants. And this new battalion of my children was, little by little, uniting and joining forces.
Three fundamental goals were set: form a community, live in poverty and dedicate themselves to the apostolate. It was what the Church asked them to live up to the times. And they were forming a compact group: people who loved each other like the first Christians, people who had nothing of their own, but were concerned only with the common good. It was the lesson that I taught them and that they strove to learn. Otherwise, they would not have been able to bear witness in an urban society, where the bourgeoisie and commerce were emerging as strong. And they placed study as the foundation of the Order: they were sons of a Doctor of the Church and they had to seek God through wisdom, cultivating the human sciences and theology.
What a good group of theologians and scholars was born right away! They knew how to seek the irrigation of their efforts in prayer. And they were conquering the world: forty years after their birth, there were already three thousand brothers in three hundred convents. They covered all of Europe, filled it with homes of culture and holiness. The saints, how they flourished!: Nicholas of Tolentine, Clara of Montefalco, Rita de Casia… I lived in them and completed my work of service to the Church. And together we managed to make the world change and people to be better.
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TABLE OF CONTENT: SAINT AUGUSTINE
- A. Biography of Augustine of Hippo
- B. Augustinian monasticism
- C. The tree that Augustine planted