Memorial of St. Augustine Bishop and Doctor of the Church Homily for Monday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time.

Memorial of St. Augustine Bishop and Doctor of the Church Homily for Monday of the 21st Week in Ordinary Time. 

1 Thessalonians 1:1-5,8b-10. Psalm 149:1b-2,3-4,5-6a,9bc. Matthew 23:13-22.

We begin the first reading this week from the First Letter of St. Paul to the Thessalonians. Paul is full of praise for the Thessalonians because of their faith, openness, and acceptance of God's word. Their faith is reflected in action. There is absolutely no point in professing faith if one is not ready to practise it.

Our faith in God must shape our conduct by which we look to God as the source of our life, trusting that His love will lead us in our journey to the fullness of life God has planned for us.

In today's Gospel, we hear Jesus condemning the scribes and the Pharisees for their pretence and religious hypocrisy. They are concerned more with outer appearance than inner value, thereby pretending to be what they are not. They want  to impress people while their hearts are far from God.

The Lord warns us to strip ourselves of every form of religious disguise and live out the life of grace in full like the Christians of Thessalonica. Let our relationship with God and with each other be guided by love.

We celebrate the memorial of St. Augustine, who allowed his relationship with God and with others to be guided by love. He was born on November 13, 354, at Tagaste (modern Algeria) in Africa. In spite of his holy mother, St. Monica, he fell at an early age into the greatest disorders and even later became a heretic of the sect of the Manichaens. Unfortunately, his father, Patricius, was then an idolater, so the youth met with little or no restraint on his side. He took up his abode at Carthage and opened a school of rhetoric. Later, he went to Rome and then to Milan, where he also began to teach rhetoric. Here God's grace and the prayers of his mother for seventeen years, who had followed him to Italy, as well as the instructions of saintly friends, particularly of St. Ambrose effected his conversion. He abandoned the sect of the Manichaens and, after sometimes gave himself entirely to God. St. Ambrose administered to him the sacrament of Baptism on Easter Eve, 387.

On his return to Africa, the mother died fulfilled to see her son return to God. He was ordained a priest in 390 and moved to Hippo, where he established another community with several of his friends, who had followed him. He was ordained a bishop five years later. From this period until his death, his life was one of ceaseless activity.

He governed his diocese, preached to his people, and wrote voluminous works that have received the admiration of the ages. His humility prompted him to write his Confessions in the year 397. He died on August 28, 430.

Through the intercession of St. Augustine, may God grant us the grace to put into good deeds the faith we profess through Christ our Lord. Amen.