My Brothers and Sisters,

Today we celebrate the Feast of St. Augustine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church.

One of St. Augustine's great contribution to the life of the Church was his insistence on the humility of the 2nd Person of the Trinity. In Christ's self-emptying love to the frailty of human life and to the death on the Cross he renewed humanity. For St. Augustine, it is by Christ's death that the sacraments are bestowed upon us. It is his by his death that the ugliness of hatred and despair is taken up and renewed into the beauty of love, forgiveness, and hope. It is by the Cross that humanity is brought back from the ugliness of sin and into the beauty of the redeemed Body of Christ. According to Augustine, the power of God's love is most evocative in the vulnerability of His self-emptying love for us. It is the encounter and the reception of this kenosis that enables persons to surrender their lives in the name of the One who is Love. Only something so beautiful can move a person to give his life to God and neighbor.

"Do we love anything but that which is beautiful? What, then, is beauty? What is it that attracts us and attaches us to the things we love? (Confessions X, 13, 20)"