Catholic Radio Dramas

I am a Christian as Well as a Leader

From a Sermon by Saint Augustine, Bishop (354-430)

I Am a Christian as Well as a Leader

You have often leaned that all our hope is in Christ and that he is our true glory and our salvation. You are members of the flock of the Good Shepherd, who watches over Israel and nourishes his people. Yet there are shepherds who want to have the title of shepherd without wanting to fulfill a pastor’s duties; let us then recall what God says to his shepherds through the prophet. You must listen attentively; I must listen with fear and trembling.

The word of the Lord came to me and said: Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel and speak to the shepherds of Israel. We jus heard this reading a moment ago, my brothers, and I have decided to speak to you on this passage. The Lord will help me to speak the truth if I do not speak on my own authority. For if I speak on my own authority, I will be a shepherd nourishing myself and not the sheep. However, if my words are the Lord’s, then he is nourishing you no matter who speaks. Thus says the Lord God: Shepherds of Israel, who have been nourishing only themselves! Should not the shepherds nourish the sheep? In other words, true shepherds take care of their sheep, not themselves. This is the principal reason why God condemns those shepherds: they took care of themselves rather than their sheep. Who are they who nourish themselves? They are the shepherds the Apostle described what he said: They all seek what is theirs and not what is Christ’s.

I must distinguish carefully between two aspects of the role the Lord has given me, a role that demands a rigorous accountability, a role based on the Lord’s greatness rather than on my own merit. The first aspect is that I am a Christian; the second, that I am a leader. I am a leader for your sake; the fact that I am a Christian is to my own advantage, but I am a leader for your advantage.

Many persons come to God as Christians but not as leaders. Perhaps they travel by an easier road and are less hindered since they bear a lighter burden. In addition to the fact that I am a Christian and must give God an account of my life, I as a leader must give him an account of my stewardship as well.

Source: The Liturgy of the Hours – Office of Readings

Saint Augustine (354-430) was born at Tagaste in northern Africa, the son of Patricius, a pagan Roman official and Monica, a Christian. At 17, he went to the university at Carthage to study rhetoric and literary pursuits. He became interested in philosophy and accepted the heresy of Manichaeism. He taught at Tagaste and Carthage for ten years then left for Rome in 373 and opened a school of rhetoric but left the following year to teach in Milan. His mother, St. Monica, had prayed relentlessly for his conversion for seventeen years. Then, in Milan, Augustine was so impressed by the Sermons of St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, he embraced the Christian faith with zeal. He was baptized by Ambrose on Easter Eve in 387.

He abandoned his secular interests and began a community life of prayer and meditation pouring over the Scriptures and completely reformed his life. Later in 387, he started back to Africa, and on the way, his mother Monica died at Ostia. The following year he established a religious community at Tagaste and began to preach with phenomenal success. He was made Bishop of Hippo in 396. During the next thirty four years Augustine wrote profusely, completing some two hundred treatises, three hundred letters, four hundred sermons and major works in theology and philosophy evidencing a towering intellect which molded the thought of Western Christianity for a thousand years after his death.

St. Augustine died on August 28 during Genseric’s siege of Hippo in 430. Among his best known works are his Confessions, one of the great spiritual classics of all time; City of God, another classic presentation of Christian philosophy and history. He is one of the greatest of the Early Church Fathers and Doctors of the Church. He is considered one of the greatest single intellects the Catholic Church has ever produced.