00:00One of the reasons that the Confessions continues to be one of the widest read books in the history
00:14of the world is precisely because of Augustine's insight into human experience. And he does a
00:20magnificent job of communicating both his own experience and what he lived and how that
00:28experience can indeed be a window, if you will, an opening to discovering a personal experience
00:35of God in human life. Augustine in the Confessions talks about friendship, talks about family,
00:41talks about the importance of his mother, talks about his father, talks about human ambition,
00:48talks about so many different aspects of human life, and then goes on to explain how these things
00:54helped or did not help his own personal pathway to discovering God and to discovering
01:01what is really holy about life.
01:13In the highly individualistic society that people are growing up in, people think that my experience
01:21is the criteria, am I happy or I'm not happy? What that might really be is, do I feel pleasure
01:28or don't I feel pleasure? Or do I feel selfish? And if I feel okay, then that's all that matters.
01:35Certainly, Augustine's experience says that, well, that isn't enough. And maybe what you're calling
01:39happiness isn't authentic happiness, because you're going to lose that too. And most things that people
01:44seem to describe is, well, why are you happy today, are things that are either very superficial, or at best,
01:52you know, important for a short period of time, but that aren't going to last forever.
01:56And Augustine gives some insight into helping people understand that having an experience of God
02:03brings you far beyond yourself. And that how an authentic experience of happiness has to include other
02:10people, and has to include being concerned about other people. And those are elements that express,
02:17I think, a very important part of the Gospel message. It's not just about me and my experience
02:22of God, either. You might have people say, oh, I have an experience of God, and I don't have to do
02:27anything else. Well, then that's probably not an authentic experience of God. Because as we know from
02:31the Gospels, as we know from the Apostolic Letters, if you love God, then you also need to be showing
02:38that by loving your neighbor, and that the two go hand in hand.
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