The Rule of St Augustine: Wisdom for Our Augustinian Moment

The wisdom of this way of life merits our attention, and not merely because of its influence on the current pope of the Roman Catholic Church. Augustine is rightly known for his immense corpus of writings and the role they have played in the development of the Western theological tradition: Confessions, The City of God, On the Trinity, and more. Of lesser renown - but still great significance - is the role that he played in the Church’s monastic tradition. Augustine lived most of his Christian life in monastic communities and even was the author of his own monastic rule (which preceded and influenced Benedict and his rule). Throughout his life, Augustine was deeply concerned with the realities of the disordered human heart. In response to those realities he committed his considerable intellect to the composition of a rule for his monastic community and submitted to it himself. That rule, The Rule of Saint of Augustine, is still in existence today, preserved, adapted, and practiced by the Augustinian Order (adapted from two documents in Augustine’s Monastic Rules - the Praeceptum and the Ordo Monasterii).