It's the Feast of
St. Augustine,
3rd Class, with the color of
White. In this episode: the meditation: "The Means of Acquiring Humility", today's news from the Church: "Does the SSPX practice a "Free Examination" of Tradition?", a preview of this week's episode of The SSPX Podcast: "Catechism: What Catholics Mean By Christ", and today's thought from the Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
Have feedback or questions about the DD or our other shows?
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Sources Used Today:
- "The Means of Acquiring Humility" — From Trinity Sunday to the Assumption
- "Does the SSPX practice a "Free Examination" of Tradition?" (FSSPX.news)
- The SSPX Podcast: "Catechism: What Catholics Mean By Christ" (SSPX Podcast)
- The Spiritual Life — Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (Angelus Press)
Please support our new project, the Archbishop Lefebvre Biography Audiobook:
Saint Augustine may be one of the easiest saints to relate to because he spent a surprising amount of his early life knowing exactly what he should do and finding reasons not to do it yet.
He was born in 354 in North Africa. His mother was Monica, whose years of prayer for her son we've already talked about. Augustine was brilliant, ambitious, and restless. He studied rhetoric, built a successful teaching career, and searched everywhere for answers, including philosophies and religions far outside Christianity.
The problem wasn't that Augustine never thought about God.
He thought about God constantly.
He just wasn't ready for God to interfere with his lifestyle.
In his Confessions, Augustine famously remembers praying, essentially, "Lord, give me chastity and continence... but not yet."
That's Augustine in one sentence.
Eventually he moved to Milan, where he began listening to Ambrose of Milan. Augustine initially went because Ambrose was famous as a speaker. Then, inconveniently, he started realizing that what Ambrose was saying actually made sense.
His conversion finally came in a garden.
Tormented by indecision, Augustine heard what sounded like a child's voice repeating, "Take and read." He opened the letters of Saint Paul and read a passage calling him to abandon his old life.
That was it.
The years of arguing stopped.
Augustine was baptized by Ambrose in 387, with Monica finally seeing the answer to the prayers she had offered for decades.
He eventually returned to North Africa, hoping for a quiet life of prayer and study.
That plan lasted about as well as most plans to become a quiet saint.
While visiting Hippo, Augustine attended Mass, and the local bishop mentioned that the Church needed another priest. The congregation apparently decided Augustine was the obvious candidate. They surrounded him and essentially pushed him toward ordination.
He later became Bishop of Hippo and spent more than thirty years preaching, writing, debating heresies, caring for his people, and producing some of the most influential works in Christian history.
His Confessions still feels surprisingly modern. Augustine writes openly about ambition, lust, friendship, grief, memory, temptation, and the strange ways we hide from ourselves. His famous line captures the whole journey: "Our heart is restless until it rests in Thee."
Augustine died in 430 while Vandals were literally besieging Hippo outside the city walls. As his world collapsed around him, the former restless young man spent his final days praying the penitential psalms.
He had spent decades searching everywhere for happiness.
In the end, he found exactly where his mother had always told him it would be.
Saint Augustine of Hippo, restless seeker who became a great Doctor of grace, pray for us.
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Explore more:
What is the SSPX Podcast?
The SSPX Podcast is produced by Angelus Press, which has as its mission the fortification of traditional Catholics so that they can defend the Faith, and reaching out to those who have not yet found Tradition.
What is the SSPX?
The main goal of the Society of Saint Pius X is to preserve the Catholic Faith in its fullness and purity, to teach its truths, and to diffuse its virtues, especially through the Roman Catholic priesthood.
Authentic spiritual life, the sacraments, and the traditional liturgy are its primary means of bringing this life of grace to souls.
Although the traditional Latin Mass is the most visible and public expression of the work of the Society, we are committed to defending Catholic Tradition in its entirety: all of Catholic doctrine and morals as the Church has always defended them. What people need is the Catholic Faith, without compromise, with all the truth and beauty which accompanies it.
https://sspx.org
