13 November—The Monitor missed the event by a day last year, but today, 13 November 2023, we celebrate St. Augustine’s 1,669th birthday. The Bishop of Hippo, not the place in Florida. Even though he became quite a respected Latin teacher and theologian, most of us remember Augustine of Hippo fondly and primarily—perhaps only—for his heart-wrenching supplication to God, as he tells us in his “Confessions”: “Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo.” What Latin! What a life! What a guy!

What a guy indeed. Augustine’s family were Romanized North African Berbers, so they likely spoke Latin at home. Except perhaps when parents Monica and Patricius didn’t want little Gus and brother Navigius and sister Perpetua to know what they were talking about. (In the Rosenberg family Yiddish was the language for parental secrets. Our everyday language was Latin. Of course.)

Augustine’s mother, Monica, was canonized herself, by the way, in part, we’re told, because husband Pat—a pagan who allegedly converted to Christianity on his deathbed—tended to screw around. We’ve all heard of Santa Monica, but her philandering husband didn’t get canonized.

Since the apple didn’t fall far from the tree, Augustine himself started sowing his wild oats as a teenager (forgive the mixed vegetarian metaphor) and, naturally ignoring his saintly mama’s admonitions, took up with a girl in Carthage. Santa Monica had wanted her brilliant son to avoid fornication (what mother doesn’t?) and marry a person of at least his own class (what mother doesn’t?).

Evidently, though, Augustine and his inamorata (a.k.a. girlfriend) read a leaked copy of Clarence Thomas’s infamous Dobbs concurring decision, didn’t take precautions, and, when Gus was 18, had a son, Adeodatus. Adeodatus means Gift of God in Latin, like Theodore in Greek, which language Augustine the brilliant Latin belles-lettrist wasn’t too comfortable in.

To his credit, Augustine maintained a presumably cordial relationship—we don’t know about possible child support or palimony, of course—with his son’s mother for 15 years and confessed that he felt guilty when, no fool he, he decided to marry a teen-aged heiress. Kind of like . . . no, we won’t go there. Teen-aged like eleven years old, by the way. And Gus felt guilty when he broke off that engagement, too.

But Augustine jilted his prepubescent heiress only because he had decided to become a priest and by that time celibacy had begun to infect the Roman Catholic priesthood. Go figure. Augustine and the church.

Gus regarded his family-way relationship as equivalent to marriage. What was a little piece of paper or priestly blessing anyway? Times haven’t changed. In all events, to prove it, Augustine wrote that even virtual marriage produced a decreased sensitivity to pain. He also confessed that, rather than a lover of marriage, as he put it, he was a slave to lust. Evidently a happy, enthusiastic slave.

But the fun ended when Augustine was 31, just about the time he got himself baptized, when, as he put it rather obliquely (and in Latin), he was “roused to a desire for wisdom, yet still was delaying to reject mere worldly happiness.” And he hadn’t even been thinking of the priesthood at the time.

But that’s when Augustine begged God in the most elegant Latin, “Da mihi castitatem et continentiam, sed noli modo.” In English, we’d put it, “Give me chastity and self-control. But not yet.” But not yet indeed. Right on, Gus!

We don’t know if Augustine actually gave up the flesh in favor of celibate wisdom, as it were, except that he told us he did. And if you can’t believe a saint and Doctor of the Church, whom can you believe?

Although Confessions is St. Augustine’s most popular publication, his best-seller list also includes other light classics like City of God, the Enchiridion (handbook on faith, hope, and love), On Christian Doctrine, and On the Trinity. Pity he never got around to writing a cookbook.

Augustine, one of the pre-eminent patristi, is naturally a patron saint of theologians. He’s also a patron of printers, although his books were reproduced only by hand in his own lifetime. Because his extensive oeuvre requires close and frequent reading, he’s the patron saint of sore eyes. And, ironically, he’s a patron saint of brewers, because he turned away from partying. It’s the Roman Catholic Church, after all.

Incidentally, Saint Augustine of Hippo is not to be confused with Saint Augustine of Canterbury. That Augustine’s claims to fame are that he was the first Archbishop of Canterbury and that Austin cars are named after him. Unfortunately, the Austin marque is now owned by the red Chinese, along with MG and Rover.

Da mihi patientiam . . .