Augustine and the Cure of Souls: Revising a Classical Ideal

Chapter 5: A New Context for Classical Therapy

Chapter Five A New Context for Classical Therapy If these problems disturb you as they disturb me, discuss them with some kind doctor of the heart (cordis medico), whether you find one there where you live or when you go to Rome every year. —Augustine, ep. 95.6 Ordination Crisis While in Rome in 388, prior to his departure for North Africa, the recently baptized Augustine wrote a treatise extolling the superior way of life found among various groups of Catholic Christians. The active life of bishops, priests, and deacons is depicted by him as “exceptionally difficult” (difficillimus ) since it is lived out under circumstances that make it problematic “to hold to the best way of life, and to maintain tranquility of mind.”They have “under their care, not only the healthy, but those in need of cure, and the vices of the crowd must be borne with in order that they may be cured.” In contrast to those Christians who live their lives in other forms of community more friendly to the virtuous life, the ordained live like physicians in the midst of a “plague.”1 118 His awareness of the difficulties and dangers of ordained ministry combined with his love of philosophical leisure gave him ample incentive to do his utmost to avoid ordination. In a later sermon given on the anniversary of his ordination he reminisced,“So much did I dread the episcopate, that since I had already begun to acquire a reputation of some weight among the servants of God, I would not go near a place where I knew there was no bishop. . . . I came to this city to see a friend. . . . It seemed safe enough because the place had a bishop. I was caught, I was made a priest, and by this grade I eventually came to the episcopate.”2 Augustine was publicly overwhelmed with tears at his ordination to the priesthood. Possidius recounts that some of those present thought that he was crying because he really wanted to be a bishop and not a mere priest. Instead, Augustine’s tears “bemoaned the many great dangers to his way of life that he anticipated would come crowding in on him.”3 He would now spend the rest of his years as that physician of souls living amid the epidemic raging among the diseased. Now for him, the “safe harbor of philosophy” was replaced with unending pastoral tasks.4 Rather than days filled with pleasing discussions of what cultivates human flourishing , he arbitrated lawsuits, interceded for prisoners, and ransomed those who were kidnapped.5 This transition from the philosophic retreat begun at Cassiciacum to the priesthood, and eventually to the episcopate, however, amounted to something more than an anguished move from a life of contemplation to one of action. Augustine’s means of coping with this crisis was to make his new life a subject of inquiry. “His intellectual interests” persevered, but were “transformed by his new duties.”6 Rather than causing him to reject his earlier learning or ideals, his forced ordination made possible the recontextualizing of his previous work. He would bring his years of reflection on spiritual guidance and personal reform to an arena they were never imagined to serve. Indeed, soon after his ordination to the priesthood, he wrote a letter to his bishop, Valerius, that makes clear that experience in ordained ministry only confirmed his earlier belief that “nothing in this life, especially at this time, is more difficult, more laborious, or more dangerous than the office of bishop or priest or deacon.”7 He contended that as a priest he had “learned much, very much more” than he had expected; the priesthood had especially exposed the limits of his previous “skill and strength” and showed him his “weakness.”8 He proceeded to inform Valerius that although he knew and held with firm faith all that is necessary for his own salvation, he was still inquiring A New Context for Classical Therapy 119 how “to make use of this for the salvation of others.”9 To do this he requested a time of retirement to study “all [of God’s] remedies in the scriptures ” so that he could be better prepared for his new duties armed not merely with his own skill, but rather with “the most salutary counsels” of the scriptures.10 After this retreat seeking “all [of God’s] remedies in the scriptures,” Augustine...