St. Augustine on Music

I have recently been reading through a delightful little volume titled Augustine Day by Day (hence the recent post from his Confessions).  One of the joys found in reading these daily selections is that you start to notice certain recurrent themes and topics, such as these passages on music:

Dear friends, sing the Psalm with human reason, not like birds.  Thrushes, parrots, ravens, magpies, and the like are often taught to say what they do not understand.  However, to know what we are saying was granted by God's will to human nature.  Hence, we who have learned in the Church to sing God's words should be eager to do so.  We should know and see with a clear mind what we have all sung together with one voice. (Commentary on Psalm 18, 2) 

Indeed, Lord, the days were not long enough as I found wonderful delight in meditating upon the depth of Your design for the salvation of the human race.  I wept at the beauty of Your hymns, and I was powerfully moved at the sweet sound of Your Church's singing.  Those sounds flowed into my ears, and the truth streamed into my heart.  My feeling of devotion overflowed, and the tears ran from my eyes, and I was happy in them. (Confessions IX, 6)

Today's icon of St. Augustine comes from Monastery Icons.

Because Augustine Is Always a Good Idea

A couple passages from Augustine's Confessions for your Monday:

I asked the earth, and it answered, “I am not he”; and everything in the earth made the same confession. I asked the sea and the deeps and the creeping things, and they replied, “We are not your God; seek above us.” I asked the fleeting winds, and the whole air with its inhabitants answered, “Anaximenes was deceived; I am not God.” I asked the heavens, the sun, moon, and stars; and they answered, “Neither are we the God whom you seek.” And I replied to all these things which stand around the door of my flesh: “You have told me about my God, that you are not he. Tell me something about him.” And with a loud voice they all cried out, “He made us.” (Book X, 6)

Belatedly I loved you, O Beauty so ancient and so new, belatedly I loved you. For see, you were within and I was without, and I sought you out there. Unlovely, I rushed heedlessly among the lovely things you have made. You were with me, but I was not with you. These things kept me far from you; even though they were not at all unless they were in you. You called and cryed aloud, and forced open my deafness. You gleamed and shone, and chased away my blindness. You breathed fragrant odors and I drew in my breath; and now I pant for you. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. You touched me, and I burned for you peace. (Book X, 27)

From the Outlier translation, brought to you by Georgetown University.

Of Men, Angels, and the Incarnation

Several years ago, while studying in Rome, I had the opportunity to attend several events with Bl. Pope John Paul II.  On one occasion several large choirs were in attendance, and filled the first quarter or so of the audience hall.  Each of these choirs was just a tad smaller than the block allotted to it.  Somehow the organization Regnum Christi ended up with the tickets to these few extra seats, and one of my classmates, a Regnum Christi member, acquired half a dozen shortly before the audience began.  They were spread out all over the hall, one here, a couple there.  And so I ended up seated, along with another classmate, in the midst of an Italian men's choir singing for the pope.  I am sure that, as a blond American, I stuck out, but at least my black coat more or less blended with the choir's uniforms; my female classmate, with Irish-American red hair, no doubt seemed even more out of place.  Our neighbors, who did not speak more than a word or two of English, were good-natured about our presence and shared their music.  We had a grand time.


I was reminded of that experience when reading the sermon of St. Bernard which I posted a couple weeks ago.  In it he contends:

The angels, we know, sinned through malice, not through ignorance and frailty; wherefore, as they were unwilling to repent, they must of necessity perish, for the love of the Father and the honour of the King demand judgment. For this cause He created men from the beginning, that they might fill those lost places, and repair the ruins of the heavenly Jerusalem.

I find this an arresting notion. If Bernard is correct, we will stand alongside the heavenly hosts as we share the beatific vision.  In the justice of God, we will merit this, of course; He will make sure that we are worthy of our new places, by His grace.  But I cannot help but chuckle, and then tremble, at the idea that I might be placed alongside archangels and cherubim, dropped there as randomly as I arrived in the midst of my Italian choir.  If this is the future that awaits us, by virtue of Christ' incarnation, we indeed have cause to celebrate Christmas!

But is Bernard correct?  This idea of mankind replacing the fallen angels is not one we often hear, in Scripture or in preaching.  I am no theologian, but I know a few, and they confirm that Bernard's suggestion, if not doctrine of the Church, is at least well-attested.

In Book 22 of The City of God, Augustine argues that God willed that

...from this mortal race, deservedly and justly condemned, He would by His grace collect, as now He does, a people so numerous, that He thus fills up and repairs the blank made by the fallen angels, and that thus that beloved and heavenly city is not defrauded of the full number of its citizens.

Is mankind merely a place-holder?  This sounds rather unlike our loving and personal God. Augustine further notes, however, that the heavenly Jerusalem "perhaps may even rejoice in a still more overflowing population."  Thus, humanity both fills the places left by fallen angels, as well as adding to the numbers of the heavenly choirs.

Writing nearly 700 years later, Anselm follows Augustine's thinking.  In Cur Deus Homo, he  contends,

Intelligent nature... was foreseen by [God] in a certain reasonable and complete number....  It was proper that God should design to make up for the number of angels that fell, from human nature which He created without sin.

Like Augustine, Anselm suggests that redeemed humanity may exceed the numbers of the fallen angels, according to the perfect design of God:

If that [perfect] number [of heavenly beings] were not found in all the angels together, then both the loss and the original deficiency must be made up from men, and more men will be chosen than there were fallen angels. And so we shall say that men were made not only to restore the diminished number, but also to complete the imperfect number.

He goes on to explain:

Human nature was either made to consummate this perfection [of the original creation], or... it was superfluous, which we should not dare affirm of the nature of the smallest reptile. Wherefore, then, it was made for itself, and not merely to restore the number of beings possessing another nature. From which it is plain that, even had no angel fallen, men would yet have had their place in the celestial kingdom.

In other words, the choir of heavenly angels, like the Italian choir I encountered so many years ago, is not quite as big as its allotted space, leaving open seats whether the full choir is present or not.

More than a century after Bernard, this idea was again raised by Thomas Aquinas, although he demurs of any concrete knowledge:

Concerning the number of all the predestined, some say that so many men will be saved as angels fell; some, so many as there were angels left; others, as many as the number of angels created by God. It is, however, better to say that, "to God alone is known the number for whom is reserved eternal happiness."

 In any event, the Church clearly teaches that, whatever our precise relationship with them, we shall spend eternity in the company of the angels and saints around the throne of God.  Thus does God become a little Child, that we might share in the everlasting life of God.


Today's image by Gustave Doré of Dante, Beatrice and the Heavenly Host of Angels, from Canto 31 of Paradiso, is brought to you via Artsy Craftsy.

Do the Editors of The Onion Read St. Augustine?

A recent headline from "America's finest news source," The Onion (New Study Reveals Most Children Unrepentant Sociopaths), brought to mind the first book of the Confessions, where St. Augustine reflects on his childhood, even trying to remember his own sins as an infant:

Who remindeth me of the sins of my infancy? for in Thy sight none is pure from sin, not even the infant whose life is but a day upon the earth.

So, even a day-old baby is a sinner. But, just in case you think he was joking, St. Augustine continues:

Who remindeth me? doth not each little infant, in whom I see what of myself I remember not? What then was my sin? was it that I hung upon the breast and cried? for should I now so do for food suitable to my age, justly should I be laughed at and reproved.

But, you might object, how can an infant sin when it cannot knowingly choose sin? Well, any thoughts you might have had of the innocence of the young, St. Augustine rejects quite explicitly:

Or was it then good, even for a while, to cry for what, if given, would hurt? bitterly to resent, that persons free, and its own elders, yea, the very authors of its birth, served it not? that many besides, wise than it, obeyed not the nod of its good pleasure? to do its best to strike and hurt, because commands were not obeyed, which had been obeyed to its hurt? The weakness then of infant limbs, not its will, is its innocence.

A little later, just to make it clear that he was sinful even as an infant, St. Augustine cites Ps. 51 for support, interpreting it quite literally:

But if I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me, where, I beseech Thee, O my God, where, Lord, or when, was I Thy servant guileless?

Now, if you go back and read the article I linked, you might notice that the "study" sounds a lot like a modern, secularized version of St. Augustine's doctrine of original sin, and of the doctrine of concupiscence. The gist of St. Augustine's arugment and of the "study" is the same. Even the cutest little kids have seriously twisted wills, are self-centered, and manipulative. Even the quote near the end of the article stating that "the disorder is considered untreatable" meshes fairly well with St. Augustine (indeed, orthodox Christian theology, in general) that sin cannot be treated like a simple disease. (Incidentally, today's feast day reminds us that it takes a miracle to make a human being free of original sin.)

Of course, the writers at The Onion turn not to theologians for support, but to psychologists. Rather than invoking a set doctrine, they rely on studies and documented psychoses. They do not speak of the essence of man, but refer to the percentage of children suffering from a psychosis. They do not call for conversion, but rather for rehabilitation.

All in all, it was a striking resemblance, I thought.

Now, to finish, and to do the unspeakable: I will try to explain a joke. Why is the article from The Onion funny, at least to someone with a twised sense of humor like my own? It is funny because everybody today believes in a doctrine of original innocence of children, not original sin. The thought that St. Augustine might be correct would probably never occur to most of The Onion's readers. And that's a problem.