Soon after his conversion, Augustine wrote one of his first works, called the Soliloquies, in which he basically argues that one soul cannot teach another anything. We merely present outward signs to one another through speech, and the inner working of illumination and insight that allows us to coordinate signs with truth: this is the work of God alone, who gives us to understand. It is a very humble view of the human teacher and a very exalted view of the divine teacher, and ironic, because St. Augustine would go on to be such a luminary for the whole of the Christian world, a teacher in Christ of a unique stature, from whom we still have so much to learn today.

St. Thomas Aquinas reformulates the same teaching positively and in a more Aristotelian fashion. Teaching and studying presume the common human nature of the teacher and student who are both searching the truth actively, by virtue of the agent intellect alive in both of them. Because one has made more progress than the other he can indicate by outward words, the preliminary thoughts and concepts by which the other might progressively derive more understanding. And yet behind both teacher and student there remains the first mover of the intellect: the uncreated Logos, the Truth who is God and who gives us to enter actively and insightfully into the search for the truth. Our active teaching and our learning participate each in their own way in the uncreated light of God.

Based on the writings of the 4th century we posses, it is not controversial to say that Augustine was the greatest speculative thinker of his generation. And his thought casts a light over the subsequent development of western European intellectual history. But what we love in Augustine is not just that he was a wonderful thinker, but that he was such a vulnerable and real human being, because in his youth, he was tormented by the desire for happiness and the desire to find an ultimate truth, amidst the sea of different human opinions. And because he was a human being who suffered. And because God by a pure grace granted him to perceive the truth of the faith, to see into the truth of Christ, as a merciful cure to his unhappiness, his anxiety and his need for the truth.

Augustine, in fact, became a mendicant of the truth, a monk, after the pattern of St. Antony of Egypt. He gave up his career as a rhetorician and civil servant to be a contemplative, and to live his life quietly in gratitude for the grace of God, in humble and soaring speculation into the mystery of God. Set free from the world, to be bound to God. Bound by vows to the truth, so as to become free for the mystery of the cross alone.

It is said that when the people in Hippo declared him a Bishop by popular acclaim, they passed him up through the crowd physically, as if by force, and he was unable to resist their physical compulsions, overwrought as he was, by weeping. It is a beautiful image. The weeping sage, who has become poor for Christ out of need for the mercy and the happiness that grace alone can procure, and who being made poor by God, is placed upon the chair of teaching to make others themselves gain Christ, by the light of the truth that he has himself first been given gratuitously to contemplate. A light that renders poor, and a light that enriches. It is ultimately the grace of the poverty of the cross: blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the kingdom of God. The original poverty is that of the heart of Christ on his cross, where he is poor to himself and rich for others. St. Augustine says in his commentary on John that Jesus is seated upon the cross as upon a master's chair, to teach the world. "I am the light of the world". The light of the contemplation of God, that makes us poor to ourselves in love, for the sake of the service of God.

We are given the grace, all of us here, as Christians, as religious, as teachers, to bring the light of Christ to the world. It is a high calling. To instruct in the faith is, St. Thomas says, one of the greatest forms of mercy, insofar as we may remove ignorance of God which is one of the most profound obstacles to joy and to holiness. But instruction in the Christian truth, communication and teaching of the truth of Christ, is only wholistic if it is also communication of a truth we contemplate. That we scrutinize and seek to understand in all its intricacies, yes, but also that we seek to love and that we believe is a merciful truth, a truth that unveils our ills and those of others, in order to heal, not in order to destroy.

We might keep in mind a few things, that we can take from the life of St. Augustine and from his teaching, as our patron and our father in the religious life. First, the primacy of grace. What God does with us or through us as a community and a faculty is truly up to him and his grace and we have nothing to add by way of merit. We should make a point of saying with truth that vocations who come here have come here despite ourselves, and that we have done nothing to earn them. Dominican triumphalism will not lead us to any great rewards in the order of grace. Even our poor merits, as St. Augustine says, are themselves God's gifts, and often we have only hindered his work in us, as if he works in us sometimes despite ourselves. That kind of theological humility is realistic and it is appealing to others who are seeking God. And its contrary is repulsive. "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God."

Second, however, because God is giving us great graces, he will also expect much of us. Every person in this room will have a great deal of responsibility in helping to renew the life of the Order and the priesthood in the coming generation. We are called to be modest in our personal aspirations, but also diligent. To be real religious who seek to humbly do their part each, and not spiritual dilatants who refuse to work, who think the habit makes the monk, who are pseudos lost in clericalist fantasies, or stupid dreams of temporal ambitions in this world. The ambitions of God and his grace are much greater and more interesting. God wants something much more for us: Let's not settle for religious mediocrity.

And lastly, we should recall that our search for the truth of Christ must take place, for all its scientific integrity, first and last by way of contemplation. The contemplation of God in the faith, as poor and as obscure as it is, is of the highest dignity. Contemplation of God in the faith is the basis of friendship with God. It is also foundation for all the rest that we are given to receive. And it will permit us to give up the temptation to seek to possess and wield the truth, allowing us to be possessed and guided by the truth, which is a much more efficacious prospect, as it will allow us to become the instruments of God by whom he communicates his truth to others.

We have reason to rejoice and reason to be grateful, with the gratitude of grace. Let us ask St. Augustine for his intercession, so that we might be carried up to God though the search for the truth, but also through this lightness of being which understands that the victory comes not from ourselves, but by way of the mercy of God. Amen.