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St. Monica’s story:

  • A Christian married to a pagan, Patricius

  • Lived in Tagaste, North Africa

  • Patricius had a violent temper and was licentius

  • Monica had a catankerous mother-in-law

  • Had 3 children to infancy, the oldest, Augustine who was 17 years old when his father died

  • Had a vision that Augustine would still return to the faith

  • Fasting and praying for Augustine

  • Saint Ambrose, Monica’s spiritual director

Augustine:

  • A rhetoric student in Carthage

  • He has accepted the “Manichean heresy”—all flesh is evil

  • Living an immoral life

  • At 29, he decided to go to Rome to teach rhetoric

  • But left for Milan

  • From there, he came under the influence of the bishop, Saint Ambrose

Ephesians 4:17-24: a new life in Christ

-17So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking.

18 They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.

19Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.

20 That, however, is not the way of life you learned when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus.

22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires;

23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds;

24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

  • The old way of life

Life before Christ- characterized by

ignorance, darkness, and alienation from God.

The consequences- old way leads

to futility, darkened understandings, and alienation from God's love and grace.

Futile Minds and Darkened Understandings:

  • Ignorance

  • Blindness

1. Ignorance

-The passage highlights a

lack of knowledge and

understanding of God's truth

2. Blindness

-It describes a condition of spiritual blindness, where people cannot see God’s plan and purpose.

Alienation from the Life of God

Separation from God

-The passage speaks of being separated from God's life-giving presence.