The Confessions By Saint Augustine

In his book The Confessions, Saint Augustine describes his conversion to Catholic Christianity, during which he encounters many aspects of love. Augustine desires nourishment to satisfy his need to be loved, and tries to find it in his childhood companions and his mistress. In book 3, Augustine states that he had a desire to be loved and mistakened this desire for lust. Eventually, he learns that the emptiness is due to desire of a different kind of love, which is the love and grace of God. In The Confessions Augustine expresses how love ultimately helps to guide him towards a true relationship with God; his heart finally finds peace and contentment in God. Throughout Confessions, he uses love, wisdom, and the desire to be loved as his gate

He says “It brought me no happiness… I am quite sure that I would not have done it on my own. Was it then that I also enjoyed the company of those with whom I committed the crime?” (51). In addition to that when he confesses to stealing pears with some other boys, he recalls that “[he] had no need to kindle [his] glowing desire by rubbing shoulders with a gang of accomplices. But as it was not the fruit that gave [him] pleasure, [he] must have got it from the crime itself, from the thrill of having partners in sin” (52). From this it is evident that Augustine did not steal because he was evil and sinful by nature but instead he did it for a sense of companionship. He says he “would not have done it on [his] own” and so it is evident that Augustine sinned out of peer pressure and the desire for

Sex ends up causing Augustine a lot of grief because for a while, he can't imagine life without it. He admits that he was so obsessed with the act that he even had sex in a church. “I defied you even so far as to relish the thought of lust, and gratify it too, within the walls of your church…” (57). Eventually, Augustine realizes that “material things” and desires “which have no soul, could not be true heart’s desire” (55). This is to say that he realizes that list is not what he needed to nourish his