Showing results for "saint augustine" in Christian Living

This is not an audiobook about Saint Augustine. In a way, it's an audiobook Augustine has written about each of us. Popular speaker and award-winning author James K. A. Smith has spent time on the road with Augustine, and he invites us to take this journey, too, for this ancient African thinker knows far more about us than we might expect. Following Smith's successful You Are What You Love, this audiobook shows how Augustine can be a pilgrim guide to a spirituality that meets the complicated world we live in.

The Confessions, an autobiography by Saint Augustine of Hippo, has become one of the most important texts in Christian literature. It is also considered to be one of the first Western autobiographies ever written. It continues to influence modern society with its striking honesty and timeless Christian themes of faith, identity, and truth. This perennial classic is a collection of 13 books detailing St. Augustine’s journey to self-knowledge and his life as a follower of Christ.

This comprehensive guide to the Christian faith focuses primarily on the themes of belief and understanding. It offers insights and guidance for those who seek to deepen their knowledge of the Christian faith and improve their personal and spiritual lives. St. Augustine provides practical advice on how to cultivate hope, faith, and charity and explains how these virtues can help Christians grow. He also addresses how to instruct and care for the needs of those who may be unfamiliar with Christianity and who may be seeking to improve their understanding of Christian faith.

The editors are, of course, aware of the danger there is in listening to a treatise like the following in a spirit of idle curiosity, and they beg any listener who has not well assured himself that his aim is right and holy to abstain from perusing it. At the same time it must not be forgotten, that something far other than a mere shrinking from subjects offensive to modern delicacy is needed, in order to purify the thoughts with respect to the holy estate of Matrimony.

Saint Augustine describes the same struggle in his Confessions, the most-read spiritual memoir in history. He experimented with different religious options, tried to break destructive habits, struggled to find the right friends, experienced a devastating breakup, and nearly burned out in his career.