Today is the feast day for St Augustine of Hippo. He is, as Rowan Williams has said, worth engaging seriously, not only for what he shows us about God and the life that leads to God, but also because of what he shows us about being human:
He grasps, as few if any pre-modern writers did, the way in which the shaping of a sense of self is a narrative business: our memory is central to whatever we mean by the life of “spirit,” conscious appropriation of who we are, and so even if we are seeking a perspective on ourselves and the world that is not bound to the changing life of a material environment, we cannot avoid coming to terms with how the passage of time is inscribed in our knowing (of ourselves and of our world)… In an intellectual culture deeply confused about the self, its reality and continuity, Augustine offers some searching and constructive questions about what we know, don’t know, can’t know and can’t doubt in our awareness of ourselves as thinking beings. And for him this is inextricably bound in with how he reads his own story—as one in which the embodied Word of God speaks to and engages with him in the actualities of history, drawing him into a relation with the divine that is in itself eternal and limitless and always rooted in what is learned within a community of material others here and now.1
Like all good theologians, Augustine is at his truest when he’s speaking of that which cannot be brought fully to speech—naming the unnameable, playfully delighting in the immeasurable depths of being-in-God. Here’s one of my favorite examples (an excerpt from his homily on Psalm 99/100), which is nothing if not wildly Pentecostal. It bears slow, careful reading:
Shout with joy to the Lord, all the earth. The whole earth cannot hear any voice at this moment, can it? Yet this command has indeed been heard by all the earth. Already the entire earth is shouting its joy to the Lord, or if any part is not shouting yet, it soon will be, for the blessing is extended to all peoples. The Church began from Jerusalem, but as it spreads it overthrows impiety in every place and builds up godliness instead. But good people are commingled with bad, for there are bad people all over the world, and good people all over the world too. In bad people the whole earth grumbles, but in the good the whole earth shouts with joy.
What is shouting with joy? Even the title of the present psalm draws draws our attention to this word, for it says In confession. What can it mean to shout for joy in confession? There is a saying in another psalm, Blessed the people that understands how to shout with joy (Ps. 88:16; 89:15). It must be something important, if the understanding of it confers blessing on us. May the Lord our God, he who renders men and women blessed, grant me to understand what to say and grant you to understand what you hear: Blessed the people that understand how to shout with joy. Let us run toward this beatitude; but let us understand properly about shouting with joy, and not just make a witless noise. What would be the use of shouting for joy, and obeying the injunction of the psalm, Shout with joy to God, all the earth, if we did not understand? What would be the point of our voices shouting on its own if our heart did not? The heart’s cry of joy is its understanding.
What I am about to describe is something familiar to you. A person who is shouting with gladness does not bother to articulate words. The shout is a wordless shout of joy; it is the cry of a mind expanded with gladness, expressing its feelings as best it can rather than comprehending the sense. When someone is exulting and happy he passes beyond words that can be spoken and instead bursts forth into a wordless cry of exultation. Such a person is clearly rejoicing vocally, but he is so full of intense joy that he is unable to explain what makes him happy. Notice that the same thing happens even to people who sing disreputable songs… People who work in the fields are especially given to joyful shouting. Harvesters and grape-gatherers and other fruit-pickers are greatly cheered by a plentiful crop and rejoice over the fecundity and bounty of the earth. In their exultation they sing, and between the words of their songs they interject happy, wordless sounds that express the elation they feel. This is called jubilation, shouting for joy…
When should we shout for joy? When we praise what is beyond utterance.... In all this consideration of created beings, which we have tried to name and list in some fashion, let the soul question itself: “Who made all these things? Who created them? Who created you, my soul, as one among them all? What are these things you are contemplating? And what are you, who contemplate? Who is he, who made both the things you contemplate, and you, who contemplate them? Who is he?” Speak of him, and in order to speak of him, first think of him, for you can think about something of which you may be unable to speak, but you will never be able to speak of something if you cannot think it.
Think about him, then, before you speak of him: and in order to think of him, draw near to him. If you want to see something clearly, and be so equipped to speak of it, you come close to get a good view, for if you were content to look only from a distance you might make a mistake. As those bodily objects are examined with the eyes, so it he with the mind; we gaze on him and see him with the heart. But where is the heart fit to see him? Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God (Mt. 5:8), he tells us. I hear, I believe, and I understand as best I can that God is to be seen with the heart, and that only a pure heart can contemplate him. But I hear another warning from scripture: Who will boast of having a pure heart? Or who will claim to be clean of sin? (Prov. 20:9, LXX). I have reviewed the whole of creation as far as i could; I have considered the material creation in the sky and on earth, and the spiritual creation in myself. I speak, I animate my limbs, I direct my voice, I move my tongue, I form words and apprehend their meaning. Yet when shall I ever comprehend myself in me? And if I cannot, how shall I comprehend what is above me?
To the human heart nonetheless is promised the vision of God, and we are summoned to the work of cleansing our hearts. Scripture bids us, “Before you see him, prepare in yourself the faculty for seeing him who you love.” Once we have heard of God, and heard his name, surely no one can fail to find sweetness in the sound of it, except an impious person far away, someone who has chosen to distance himself...
Serve the Lord with cheerfulness. Cheerfulness will be full and perfect only when this perishable nature has clothed itself in imperishability and our mortality is put on immortality. Then will cheerfulness be perfect, and perfect too will be our jubilation; then will praise be unceasing and love free from all scandals: then will the crop be unthreatened and life unshadowed by death. But what about us here? Is there no joy for us? Joy there is indeed, for if there were no joy we could not shout for joy and then how could the psalm bid us, Shout with joy to the Lord, all the earth? Joy there certainly is even here; joy in our hope of eternal life as we taste here what will completely satisfy us hereafter.
Williams, On Augustine, ix-x.
This is so timely....
“People who work in the fields are greatly given to joyful shouting.” Thought of this in aftermath of World Series last fall as my son and I watched the celebrations and walked the streets with horns honking and bars and restaurants overflowing into the streets as perfect strangers hugged each other.