14/01/2026
St. Augustine: “Pick It Up, Read It”
Aurelius Augustinus, known as Augustine of Hippo, or St. Augustine, is called by the Encyclopedia Britannica as “perhaps the most significant Christian thinker after St. Paul.” Christian History Magazine states the same but without the “perhaps.” John Piper says his influence on the Western World is “staggering.” RC Sproul said he “is the man upon whose shoulders the whole history of theology stands.” The great 19th century theologian B.B. Warfield said, “it was Augustine who gave us the Reformation.” Jerome, a contemporary of Augustine, said Augustine "established anew the ancient faith." Luther, Calvin and Zwingli were influenced by Augustine, and before them, Wycliffe and Hus were influenced by the writings of Augustine. (However I agree with some modern historians who say the reformers referenced Augustine simply to show their views were not novel, and that Augustine’s influence on them is “overstated.” They got their theology from the same place as St. Augustine, the Scriptures).
Augustine was born in North Africa (presently Algeria) in 354 AD. Augustine’s father was a pagan and his mother, Monica, was a devout Christian. Historian Philip Schaff writes of Monica, “one of the noblest women in the history of Christianity, of a highly intellectual and spiritual cast, of fervent piety, most tender affection, and all-conquering love.”
Monica prayed earnestly for her son calling him “the son of so many tears.” Augustine writes, “Even as a boy I had heard of eternal life promised to us through the humility of the Lord our God, who came down to visit us in our pride, and I was signed with the sign of his cross, and was seasoned with his salt even from the womb of my mother….”
However, Augustine left the faith of his mother to live a loose, hedonistic life. He once prayed, Lord “grant me purity and self-control but not yet.” He said he was afraid God would “cure me of my disease of lust which I desired to have satisfied rather than extinguished.”
Augustine moved to Milan to accept a highly sought after and prestigious position as a teacher of rhetoric. Here he found the man Monica called “an angel of God,” the Bishop of Milan, Ambrose. Ambrose was an esteemed leader and preacher who quickly got Augustine’s attention and respect. “Only his celibacy appeared to me a painful burden,” he said. Augustine wondered, "Will I ever be able to live according to the Christian standard of holiness, will I ever be able to keep myself from the vile, sensuous life in which I have lived so long?"
After years of searching and not finding satisfaction in his hedonism, his philosophy or other religions, Augustine knew in his heart that the God of Ambrose and his mother was the Truth. But he had to face his inner demons.
One day in his garden, he was searching his soul “weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart,” he said, “when suddenly I heard the voice of a boy or a girl I know not which – coming from the neighboring house, chanting over and over again, ‘Pick it up, read it; pick it up, read it.’ Immediately I ceased weeping and began most earnestly to think whether it was usual for children in some kind of game to sing such a song, but I could not remember ever having heard the like. So, damming the torrent of my tears, I got to my feet, for I could not but think that this was a divine command to open the Bible and read the first passage I should light upon….I snatched it up, opened it, and in silence read the paragraph on which my eyes first fell: ‘Not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual excess and lust, not in quarreling and jealousy. Rather, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh’. (Romans 13: 13-14). For instantly, as the sentence ended, there was infused in my heart something like the light of full certainty and all the gloom of doubt vanished away…”
He immediately went in to his mother, and told her what happened, "to her great joy.” After explaining to her how it occurred, “she leaped for joy triumphant” and she praised God. He received baptism from Ambrose in Milan on Easter Sunday, 387.
“Oh Lord…You have loosed my bonds,” Augustine prayed. “I will offer to you the sacrifice of thanksgiving. Let my heart and my tongue praise you, and let all my bones say, ‘Lord, who is like unto you?’ Let them say so, and answer you me and say unto my soul, ‘I am your salvation’…. And it was now a joy to put away what I formerly feared to lose. For you did cast them away from me, O true and highest Sweetness.”
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