As we celebrate the life of St Augustine, Fr Paul Gooley reads from the Gospel of Matthew (23: 27-32) in which Jesus continues to call out the scribes and Pharisees, saying ‘you appear to people from the outside like good honest men but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness’.

Fr Paul says yesterday we celebrated the life of St Monica, one of whose children was St Augustine and it is he, whose memorial we celebrate today.

Augustine, like Monica, was born in Africa of a Berber family. He was brought up a Christian but left the Church early and spent a great deal of time seriously seeking the truth. Then through the prayers of his mother and the teaching of St Ambrose of Milan, he was converted back to Christianity and baptized in 387, which shortly before his mother’s death.

Augustine had a brilliant legal and academic career, but after his conversion he returned home to Africa and led an ascetic life. He was elected Bishop of Hippo and spent 34 years looking after his flock, teaching them, strengthening them in the faith and protecting them strenuously against the errors of the time.

Augustine wrote an enormous amount and left a permanent mark on both philosophy and theology. His Confessions, as dazzling in style as they are deep in content, are a landmark of world literature.

He was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Boniface VIII in 1308.

On this day, Fr Paul invites us to ask, ‘St Augustine… Pray for us!’.