St. Augustine, as Father Y. M. Congar made very clear in his early History of Medieval and Modern Ecclesiology, is the great genius of Western patristic ecclesiology. His influence for centuries has been profound and universal. It was he who affirmed that the door to finding Christ was precisely the Church, and that this meant walking with him attached to the hierarchy of the Church.
But here the great question arose: What ideal of radicalization did Christian life require in the Church? Augustine, after long hesitations and inner conflicts, with the help of grace, followed the Pauline proposal: life in communion at the service of God: fraternal life in a monastery. In this way, St. Augustine will give particular importance to the monastic life of the martyrial radicality of Christianity.
Augustine, in his founding of a monastery in his own town. There he began to live according to the manner and rule established in the time of the holy apostles. He wanted to transform that group into a true Crusader community. In the Life of St. Augustine written by his former companion, St. Possidius, it is stated that the fundamental characteristic of the first monastery was “the renunciation of all that they possessed and the strict community of goods, according to the way of life and the regulation of the apostles” (Vita. 5, 1).
The ‘Regula’ is the reflection of the doctrine and the experience of a spiritual guide for a community that seeks God. It represents the genuine written expression of living in communion for those who aspire to Christian perfection. It declares, right from the beginning, that the first thing for which the brothers have gathered “is “to live with one accord in the house, and have one soul and one heart directed toward God.”
Augustine’s episcopal activity was truly extremely ecclesiological: in his diocese, in the Church of Africa and in the universal Church. It included the ministry of the word, the “audientia episcopi”, in which he attended to and judged cases, the care of the poor and orphans, the formation of the clergy, the organization of male and female monasteries, the visit to the sick, the intervention on behalf of the faithful before the civil authority, the administration of ecclesiastical property, the numerous and long journeys to participate in the frequent African councils or to respond to the requests of his colleagues, the dictation of letters in response to those who appealed to him from the most diverse regions and classes, the illustration and defense of the faith.
Augustine has not left us a systematic treatise on ecclesiology, but the study and reflection on the Church was one of the most persistent themes in his pastoral and theological work. On this subject Augustine is doctrinally abundant, complex and difficult to systematize. His work on the ecclesiological theme also increased with his constant activity in controversies and in refutations of positions that he considered to be an attack on dogma or on the life of the Church.
Two dimensions of his ecclesiology arouse particular interest today: the Christological and the pneumatological.
Christology appears in his affirmation that Jesus Christ is the one who assists his Church, who is present in it as its Head. Christ is the ‘caput’ of the Church as the only mediator and redeemer of men. Christ and the Church are one single “mystical Person”, the total Christ: “Amazed, rejoice; we have become Christ. For if he is the Head, we shall be his members; the total man is he and we” (In Io. ev. 21, 8).
And together with this profile, his pneumatological ecclesiology appears. Since the ‘Soul’ of the mystical body is the Holy Spirit, life of the People of God, principle of communion, of love, inexhaustible source of the prodigious expansion and universality of the Church, the Holy Church is the house of God for St. Augustine and, thus, what the soul is to the body of man, the Holy Spirit is to the body of Christ, which is the Church (Serm. 267, 4).
In the ecclesiology of St. Augustine, his fundamental notion of communion, forged in his intervention in the Donatist controversy, is of enormous interest. To refer to ecclesial communion, St. Augustine uses three essential parameters: – the communion of the sacraments or institutional reality founded by Christ on the foundation of the apostles; – the communion of the saints, or spiritual reality, which unites the just until the end of time. – John the communion of the blessed, or eschatological reality, which brings together all those who have achieved salvation.
In contrast to the schism and the deniers of the ecclesial dogma, Saint Augustine claims the ‘personified’ appeal of the unity of the Church. In his theological work appears the persistent call to the ‘unitas’ in a single body. The unity in its double aspect, internal on the one hand, and the charitable union of the faithful, which reproduces the very mystery of the Church, considered as a saving institution of humanity tending to the fullness in Christ. 12. It is, therefore, a unity guaranteed by the vitalizing and unifying presence of the Holy Spirit, fed by the same bread, expressed by a single faith and made testimony by the practice and experience of charity. A church disconnected from the Spirit ceases to be a church. If, on the contrary, it possesses the Spirit, it is communion with God and among its members. It is unity with Christ and in the Holy Spirit that counts above all, so that there is a church and we can speak of a church. 13. We can affirm that in the Augustinian ecclesiology, repeated appeals to the terms “communion” and “unity” acquire importance. Augustine was, first and foremost, the theologian of unity: his desire for communion in the community and in the Church, that is, recomposition of his very disjointed and restless being in communion with God. For this communion Agustín prays, meditates and dreams. And your community should be the sketch and model of this personal, social and ecclesial communion. Towards this communion you have to run as the deer does towards the fountain (ENAR. in ps. 41, 2). 14. Augustine knows that in God is true rest, and towards him it is necessary to walk together, united on the way, participating in others of longing and fatigue, in communion of desires, dragging with our same love those we love (conf. 13, 9, 10). Bon walking in the church tent, which is distinguished by peace of harmony and by common charity (ENAR. in Ps. 103, 2, 11). 15. In the community, he walks looking together, in the tent of interiority and his being, to God, because the community is the temple from which God lives, his house, his true room, his sanctuary. But Agustín is convinced that it is best to let God be his owner, because it is God himself who makes us rich with his wealth, because without him we are nothing, and it is that the only way to grow is by possessing God Q. But it is charity that makes us one and the place where God dwells, sanctifying us, because only one is the heart of all united by charity: 16. The stones used for the new house that is built after captivity are united in such a way and in such a way reduces them To unity, charity, which is no longer stone on stone, but all of them are a single stone. « Do not admire yourself; This was made by the new song; That is to say, this invocation was due to charity […]. Where there is unity of spirit there is only one stone, but a stone made up of many stones. How was one of many? suffering each other with charity » (ENAR. in 95, 2; cf. 131, 4). 17. Bon also Saint Augustine is convinced that sharing spiritual and material goods builds communion. This is asked, first of all, from their monks (Reg. 1, 4-8; 5, 2). Augustine wanted to organize his community by relying on the example of the Jerusalem community: “All believers agreed and had everything in common; They sold their possessions and their goods and distributed them among all, according to the need of each one” (Acts 2,42; cf. 4,32). Although, in the monastic tradition, as an ideal, the accent was placed on the personal practices of Asceticism, Agustín displaces him towards the proper value of life in community; Specifically, mutual love, having only one soul and one heart, in communion of material and spiritual goods. Love and communion form for him a necessary unity in such a way that true love of neighbor means striving for him to find happiness where we also find it, specifically in God.
