Kolawole Chabi

Sommaire : Augustin est connu pour son esprit de service qui le porte à produire des écrits en réponse aux requêtes d’amis, de connaissances ou même de personnes étrangères qui sollicitent son aide. En 410, il reçoit une lettre (ep. 117) de Carthage, de la part de Dioscorus, jeune homme d’origine grecque, qui lui envoie de nombreuses questions sur les dialogues de Cicéron. Sa recherche est motivée par la crainte de paraître ignorant devant ceux qui lui poseraient des questions sur ces sujets de retour dans sa patrie. Augustin saisit l’occasion pour le détourner des ambitions de la vaine gloire et lui montre, en exposant sa connaissance des écoles philosophiques antiques, qu’il ne sert à rien de s’imbiber des opinions des philosophes quand on ne recherche pas dans l’humilité la vérité elle-même. Cet article présente et analyse l’exposé d’Augustin des théories et des contradictions de ces philosophies antiques, et montre les recours aux références bibliques presque inaperçues présentes dans la lettre.

This paper investigates Augustine’s Letter 111 to expose the Bishop of Hippo’s stand on the problem of violent sexual abuse perpetrated on Catholic nuns and its consequence on their integrity. Having presented the general historical and sociopolitical context in which the letter was written, it surveys the question of violence in Augustine’s epistolary in general. The analysis of the final section of the Letter 111 shows that according to Augustine, despite the defloration of their virginity, raped holy women do not lose their chastity so long as in their mind, they did not consent to lust.

Augustine’s teaching on wealth and poverty, on the relations between the poor and the rich has been extensively studied in the past few decades. However, much attention has not been given to his considerations on the prosperity of the wicked and the tendency of the faithful to serve God for an immediate material reward. In this paper, I examine the bishop of Hippo’s preaching on this question. Predominantly, in his Sermones ad populum and Enarrationes in Psalmos, Augustine constantly calls his flock to acknowledge the author of prosperity and of all good things as the Supreme Good, and to prefer him to all the ephemerous possessions they may have in this world. Above all, he encourages the faithful to despise the prosperity of the wicked which is only apparent and to hope for God himself their reward for serving him.

This article studies Augustine’s Eucharistic Spirituality as it emerges primarily from his preaching, in his catechesis during the Easter Season. It investigates how the bishop of Hippo explains to the neophytes the transformation that makes bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ in order to ignite their awareness about what it is that they receive at the Altar. It further considers what Augustine indicates as the spiritual disposition necessary for the reception of the sacrament and its effects in the life of those who worthily share in it. Finally, the article explores the link Augustine establishes between the Eucharist and the Church to demonstrate the importance of Unity among those who approach the Altar of the Lord and the need to continuously become what we receive even today as we perpetuate the memorial of the Lord in our Eucharistic celebrations.

This paper is about the contribution of Saint Augustine to the reform of the Catholic Church in North Africa, through his ministry of preaching. When he was still a priest at Hippo, Augustine waged a forceful and successful war against some pagan practices which had gradually crept into the Church. The common practice of celebrating the dead in the Roman world was being applied to the Saints of the Church and Christians were celebrating their memory by getting drunk. The prohibition of such practices by the authority of the Church met with the resistance of the faithful, so Augustine decided to act precisely through the power of the Word he proclaimed to his flock. In his Letter 29 addressed to Alypius the Bishop of Thagaste, he narrates how he convinced the faithful to stop the celebration of the feast called Laetitia on the feast day of Saint Leontius. After sketching the background of the devotion to the Saints in North Africa, our study examines the line of Augustine’s argumentation that led to the success of this preaching, and hence shows how he contributed to the reform of the Church of his day.