September 1, 2024

Twenty-Second sunday in ordinary time

by Fr. Jonah Teller, OP

Dear St. Joseph Family,

Fr. Jonah here, still filling in for Fr. Boniface while he’s away. We just celebrated the feast of St. Augustine on August 28. We Dominicans call him “Holy Father Augustine,” an honor reserved only to St. Dominic (our founder) and St. Francis (whose order, the Franciscans, was founded around the same time and has similar characteristics). St. Augustine wrote a rule for monastic life that the Dominican Order adopted when it was founded, and his writings are hugely influential for the thought of the great Dominican theologian St. Thomas Aquinas, so his influence is still felt in our lives today in a significant way. I’ll leave you with a stirring passage from his autobiography, Confessions:

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.

St. Augustine, pray for us!

Peace,
Fr. Jonah, OP