Dcn Susan Erickson

Dear Siblings in Christ,

“It was meant to be.” “That had to be more than just coincidence.” “The stars must have been in alignment.”

There have probably been times in your life when you—or someone you knew—used one of these phrases to explain something that seemed too…perfect to be random.

St Augustine of Hippo (d. 430), whom the Church recognizes today, might have said something similar about the circumstances of his conversion to Christianity.

Prior to his conversion the young Augustine was what today we might call a “seeker.” He wrestled with philosophies, like Manichaeism, that he found attractive, and he also wrestled with his love of pleasure: Augustine’s famously flippant prayer “Grant me chastity and self-control, but please not yet” appears in his Confessions.

Then one day, in the midst of these internal debates, Augustine (as he recounts in the Confessions) seeks to clear his mind in a small garden.  Suddenly he hears a child singing over and over again “‘Pick it up and read, pick it up and read.’” So Augustine opens a book of Paul’s Epistles that he had taken into the garden with him. And his eye immediately alights on Romans 13:13-14:  “Not in dissipation and drunkenness, nor in debauchery and lewdness, nor in arguing and jealousy; but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh or the gratification of your desires.”

“I had no wish to read further, nor was there need,” Augustine continues. “No sooner had I reached the end of the verse than the light of certainty flooded my heart and all dark shades of doubt fled away.”

The child’s odd little song, and the verses from Paul’s Letter to the Romans, were not just coincidental in Augustine’s telling; they fit into a larger pattern. The “story” of the Confessions, according to one of the essays in my edition, is the story of Augustine’s growing realization that he had a place in God’s story. Indeed, Augustine would have no coherent story to tell about his life but for that place in a larger divine narrative that begins with the Creator.

The stories we hear in Scripture, and the story of the Church, provide us ways of making narrative sense of our lives that we might otherwise spend a lifetime searching for. May we pray for the grace to see our roles in God’s story as revealed in Scripture and the life of the Church.  And may we welcome the “chance” to be participants in God’s making all things new through Christ’s love.

Faithfully,

— Dcn Susan