ST. AUGUSTINE: THE BISHOP AND HIS CLERGY

1. The clergy

1. The clergy existed and was the subject of many attempts at communal living by the early presbyteries. In this matter, Augustine was also a true ‘genius’. The Hipponense presbytery of St. Augustine was something very original. He understood the sublimity of the priestly state, but he also understood that this, despite its great dignity, was not a state of perfection if the coordinates of holiness that the mission of Jesus Christ demanded were not added to it. He valued the greatness of monasticism, but understood that its discipline was incompatible with the functions of a priesthood destined for the Christian people.
2. Augustine perceived that there was no incompatibility between monastic life and clerical life as long as the demands of both were harmonized. He himself tried to achieve this synthesis, and this synthesis was his own.
   2. The episcopal house
3. For Augustine, the cleric must be first and foremost a cleric, with his characteristic virtues, spirituality and ministry. Different from those of the monk, according to his sentence, “a good monk is hardly a good cleric.” Moved by this guiding principle, he did not allow himself to be carried away by his own monastic enthusiasm, nor did he think of monasticizing his clergy as Eusebius, Zeno, Martin and other bishops did. As soon as he reached the episcopate he clearly saw the incompatibility of his new life and the obligations that his new ministry imposed on him and he did not hesitate for a moment to leave his beloved monastery, where he lived together with his monks, to move to his episcopal house and convert it into a kind of clerical convent.
4. And in seeking a model for this invention of an “Episcopal House” he turned his eyes not to the monastic deserts that were then flourishing, but to the early Christian community of Jerusalem, to find in the life of the Apostles the norm of his episcopal life and that of his clergy.
5. Augustine’s family is entirely clerical and he lives with it. We know the names of all who composed it: they were all clergy. Of all of them one could say what he wrote of his subdeacons: “They are poor and, with the grace of God, they await divine mercy. They have no goods of which they can dispose. Stripped of their goods, earthly desires ceased. They live with us in a common society and no one distinguishes them from those who contributed something. The unity of charity must overcome the comfort of the earthly inheritance.
6. Augustine’s house was more than a monastery, it was a family convent, a dwelling, a priestly home. For Augustine it is the “house” and, precisely, the “house of the Bishop”, the “Episcopio”, “our house”, the “house of the Church”. Only once does he give it the name of “monastery of clerics”.
7. The life that is led in it is “a society”, “a social life”. For this reason the Augustinian presbytery is more a home than a monastery, more society than solitude, more charity than austerity. Its head is more a father than a superior; the subjects are more sons than vassals; its inhabitants are more brothers than colleagues. Its rule is priestly charity, which vertically and horizontally governs, dominates and transforms all community life. 3 Thé community life of the clergy.
8. Consistent with this concept of the common life of the clergy, the norm and ideal of the Hipponense presbytery is the “aurea mediocritas” the “golden meanness” so characteristic of the clergy who must live with and for the people. The entire organization of the family of St. Augustine is inspired by this spirit which is the climate that permeates his entire program of the common life of the clergy.
9. The clothing of his clergy is decent, without slovenliness or luxury. The food is frugal but sufficient and nutritious without excluding meat and wine from the table, the subject of rigorous prohibitions among the monks. During the common meal, useful writings are read, but there is also friendly conversation or interesting problems are discussed and discussed, strictly and uncompromisingly excluding any gossip about the absent person, as a quartet written on a sign posted in a visible place in the dining room warns. “Bishops and priests always find fraternal hospitality in the clerical home and a place in the priestly convivium, where food is served on decent plates and dishes made of wood, marble and silver. And while the monks devote themselves to the cultivation of the land and other material needs, the time left free by psalmody is dedicated by the Augustinian clerics to study, prayer and the various clerical ministries in union with the bishop.”
   4. The community life of the Episcopal House
10. For Augustine there is an essential difference between the monk and the cleric, between the monastery with its garden where his monks continue to live, from where he sometimes transfers monks to his Episcope, and the Episcope where he lives with his clergy. The former, as monks, must live in solitude, removed from contact with the world; the latter, on the other hand, must live in society in order to sanctify the world. .
11. For this reason, their house is attached to the nave of the church. In the monastery, on the other hand, the church ‘is for the house. His clerics, consecrated to the good of the people, must not shun clerical ministries in order to devote themselves to contemplation, but must find in these ministries the proper climate and the elements of their sanctification. But this demands constant contact with God, without which all ministry is dispersion and self-emptying condemned to sterility, a contact that cannot be achieved without a discipline of life, the practice of certain virtues and a good dose of contemplative life that defends and develops the supernatural spirit.
12. All these elements that preserve and foster the true spirit are encrypted in the triple renunciation: poverty, obedience and chastity, which form the path opened by Christ himself and taught first by the Apostles and then by the Church. Augustine knows this and is so convinced of the need for this element that he makes it a real requirement for those who wish to form part of his clergy. This is one of the few cases in which Augustine shows himself inflexible and intransigent. He had laid down a rule according to which no one could be a cleric of his church except on condition that he submit to the renunciation of all his goods by means of strict evangelical poverty and by living in community under him and with the other clerics.
13. Augustine demands more than the ecclesiastical legislation imposes. Some complained about this. However, Augustine, a lover of concord, gave in, but, after further reflections, he returned definitively to his first determination and established poverty and community life as an irrevocable condition for admission to the clergy. As a consequence of this, St. Augustine imposes on his clerics the “profession of the clergy and of holiness.” The “holiness” of which the Bishop of Hipponia speaks is poverty and community life guaranteed by a true vow. In fact, Augustine speaks expressly of “profession” and vows with respect to his clergy, and explicitly urges their fulfillment. He shows the evils that failure to comply with this law brings about and regrets the conduct of one of the clerics of his presbytery named Januarius who, despite his vow of poverty, secretly and fraudulently retained a field and died after having confirmed his possession by means of a public document. The grief that saddened Saint Augustine and that he expressed to his people with such serious expressions indicates the seriousness of the commitment to which his clerics submitted. 14. All this, translated into our current legal language, indicates that the Hipponense clergy lived under the regime of a true state of perfection not justified by vows, but as a requirement of ministerial service. Augustine never confused this life with that of the monks, nor did he identify his clerics with them. They were not monks. They were not lay people who acted as clerics, they were clerics subject to the evangelical counsels; they were clerics under the regime of a state of perfection that imitated the “apostolic life” recounted in the book “Acts of the Apostles.”

Mgr. Jaume González-Agàpito