St. Augustine is a towering figure in Western civilization, with his Confessions, a foundational work not only of theology and philosophy but of literature and psychology as well. The book could be described as the first Christian autobiography: Augustine wrote it when he was bishop of Hippo in northern Africa, in the late stages of the Roman Empire.

From an exposition of nascent selfishness in children and the doctrine of Original Sin; to the exploration of his innermost self, who finds his voice by addressing God directly; to chapters on the nature of creation and the human perception of time; to the dramatic description of his conversion, sparked in the garden by the overheard words, “Tolle, lege” (“Pick up and read”), Augustine holds under his eye and mind a wide swath of human experience. If you have not read Confessions, you must at least go to the library, pick the volume off the shelf and open randomly to a page – just as he did with the New Testament – and see what insight the great Augustine has for you.

I first read Confessions some 40 years ago in a college course dedicated solely to the book. As I have gone back to the volume over the years, I find that different sections and lessons stand out in my mind at different times of my life. Indeed, Augustine offers not only an account of his own life, faith, thinking, relationships and loves, but also provides a helpful guide to all who seek a life of deeper reason and meaning.

Reading the book for the first time — as a student setting out to conquer the world with my wit and writing — I soaked in the careful thought of Augustine as he takes an idea, turns it around with his powerful intellect, comes to what I think is the perfect conclusion, and then adds one or two more insights that make the idea shine even brighter.

As I was rediscovering my Catholic faith, in my early twenties,  I followed intently Augustine’s rejection of Manichean dualism – a cult akin to today’s relativism – and the gradual conversion that brought him to the insight, “You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

The famous petition, “Make me chaste, Lord, but not yet,” also hit a nerve in those younger days.

Striking, as well, were: “To Carthage then I came” (a line alluded to in T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland,” which mourns the loss of cultural underpinnings of the West), and “Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand” (a phrase that prefigured the more condensed “Credo ut intelligam” of St. Anselm).

Now, in the latter phase of my life, Confessions still has relevance, but more so for the recorded words of Augustine’s saintly mother. St. Monica is well-known for drawing her wayward son into the Catholic Church with her great faith, persistent prayers and manifold tears. She follows him to Milan, where he comes under the positive sway of the bishop, St. Ambrose, who famously consoles a distraught Monica with the cogent prediction, “A child of so many tears cannot be lost.”

After Augustine’s conversion and baptism, mother and son start back to Africa, stopping in the Italian port city of Ostia. Knowing her death near, Monica sits with her son by the window of a quiet room, speaking of the mysteries of life, and how God’s grace and mercy have seen them through trials and troubles. “What I do here any longer, and why I am here, I know not …” Monica says to her son; her greatest desire of seeing him safely within the Catholic Church had been accomplished. Augustine is worried and bewildered that she would express such a strong willingness to pass from this life and reminds her that she had wanted to be buried in their North African homeland by the grave of her husband.

At this point, as Augustine relates, Monica utters the famous words that  give me solace, now that my wife and I are living far from the places of our births. “Lay this body anywhere; let not the care for that in any way disquiet you: this only I request, that you would remember me at the Lord’s altar, wherever you be.”

After her death, Augustine goes through a period of grief, guilt for his former way of life, and ultimately grace and spiritual growth. In writing of his emotions and remembrances, he has provided a guide for Christians over millennia. Just because we believe that this life is not the end, and eternal life awaits the just, it is still appropriate to grieve over the death of a loved one. Death is still a punishment for Original Sin and a searing separation – of the body from the soul of the deceased, and of precious relationships between the living and the dead. Christians can be consoled by the victory of Christ over death and hope for eternal life in heaven, but while we are on this earth, death literally stinks.

For his monumental work, we can quote St. Augustine’s final words in Confessions: “Gratias Tibi, Domine.”