Signs of the Times  

SIGNS OF THE TIMES--LARGEST REPOSITORY OF TALKS BY PRIESTS ON THE INTERNET--Join us for these special talks from many different priests from various Marian conferences, Mass homilies, retreats, etc. in honor of this year that has been designated as the "Year of the Priest" by Pope Benedict XVI...re-learn the Catechism and receive much spiritual direction with these powerful talks on the Mass, Confession, Real Presence of Jesus inthe Eucharist, Sacrament of Matrimony and much more....

SIGNS OF THE TIMES--LARGEST REPOSITORY OF TALKS BY PRIESTS ON THE INTERNET--Join us for these special talks from many different priests from various Marian conferences, Mass homilies, retreats, etc. in honor of this year that has been designated as the "Year of the Priest" by Pope Benedict XVI...re-learn the Catechism and receive much spiritual direction with these powerful talks on the Mass, Confession, Real Presence of Jesus inthe Eucharist, Sacrament of Matrimony and much more....

SIGNS OF THE TIMES--LARGEST REPOSITORY OF TALKS BY PRIESTS ON THE INTERNET--LIVE INTERVIEW WITH FR. WINGATE--Join us for these special talks from many different priests from various Marian conferences, Mass homilies, retreats, etc. in honor of this year that has been designated as the "Year of the Priest" by Pope Benedict XVI...re-learn the Catechism and receive much spiritual direction with these powerful talks on the Mass, Confession, Real Presence of Jesus inthe Eucharist, Sacrament of Matrimony and much more....

SIGNS OF THE TIMES--LARGEST REPOSITORY OF TALKS BY PRIESTS ON THE INTERNET--Join us for these special talks from many different priests from various Marian conferences, Mass homilies, retreats, etc. in honor of this year that has been designated as the "Year of the Priest" by Pope Benedict XVI...re-learn the Catechism and receive much spiritual direction with these powerful talks on the Mass, Confession, Real Presence of Jesus inthe Eucharist, Sacrament of Matrimony and much more....

      Lord, what we know not, teach us.

      Lord, what we have not, give us.

      Lord, what we are not, make us.

     O Lord, forgive us what we have been.

     Sanctify what we are, and order what we shall be.

     O Lord, thou hast made us for thyself,
 
     And our hearts shall find no rest

     Until they rest in thee.                                Prayer of St. Augustine



   Late have I loved you, O eternal truth and goodness : late have I sought you, my Father!
 
   But you sought me, and when you shone forth upon me, then, I knew you, then I learned, so late, to love you.

    I thank you, O my light, that you taught my soul what you would be to me, and inclined your face to me in pity.  You, O Lord, have become my hope, my comfort, my strength, my all: my soul rejoiced in you.  The darkness vanished from before my eyes, nd I beheld you, the sun of righteousness!

     When I loved darkness, then I knew you not, but wandered on from night to night.  But you led me out at last from that blindness.  You took me by my hand, and yu called me, then to you.

    And now I can thank you, and your mighty voice, which has penetrated to my inmost heart.  Amen.
                                                                                                                  St. Augustine


     "LATE IT WAS THAT I LOVED YOU, BEAUTYSO ANCIENT AND SO NEW, LATE HAVE I LOVD YOU!  AND LOOK, YOU WERE WITHIN ME AND I WAS OUTSIDE, AND THERE I SOUGHT FOR YOU AND IN MY UGLINESS I PLUNGED INTO THE BEAUTIES THAT YOU HAVE MADE.  YOU WERE WITH ME, AND I WAS NOT WITH YOU.  THOSE OUTER BEAUTIES KEPT ME FAR FROM YOU, YET IF THEY HAD NOT BEEN IN YOU, THEY WOULD NOT HAVE EXISTED AT ALL.  YOU CALLED, YOU CRIED OUT, YOU SHATTERED MY DEAFNESS, YOU FLASHED, YOU SHONE, YOU SCATTERED MY BLINDNESS; YOU BREATHED PERFUME, AND I DREW IN MY BREATH AND I PANT FOR YOU; I TASTED, AND I AM HUNGRY AND THIRSTY; YOU TOUCHED ME AND I BURNED FOR YOUR PEACE."
                                                                          --Excerpt from "The Confessions; Bk.X,Ch.28

   ....He went to Carthage Univ. to study to become a rhetorician.  During is studies he came across a book by Cicero about the pursuit of wisdom, and this made him dissatisfied rhetoric, the art of making the worse appear the better reason.  Cicero's book, now lost, changed the course of Augustine's life.  He turned to the Bible but was repelled by what he saw as the vulgarity of its style and also bythe questionable morality of much that it contained.  After that, Augustine explored the Manichean philosophy, which taught that the human body was in itself evil.  He found this too unsatisfactory, as he did the philosophy of Plato.  He even dipped into astrology.
     When he was 29, Augustine went to Rome, then two years later to Milan, where he fell under the spell of the great Ambrose, whomhe heard preach evey Sunday.  Ambrose gradually overcame the various bjections that Augustine had felt towards Christianity.  As he gradually became converted, the immorality of his lifestyle dawned on him and he became deeply depressed.  In the end, he flung himself down under a fig tree, sobbing, "Why not now?  Why not make this the end of my vile behavior?"  He seemed to hear a voice: 'Take and read.'  He took up the bible and opened it at random.  His eyes fell on the passage, "Not in rioting, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife nor in envy.."  He followed the instruction to go with Christ.
      Augustine was baptized in 386, became a priest at Hippo in 391 and bishop in 395.  He became a reformed character, turning his house into a monastery.  He eventually died on 28 August in 430 A.D.  The volatile and mercurial Augustine wrote prolifically, his essays fill 11 volumes.  Probably no other writer has had more influence on the development of Christian doctrine than Augustine.  Where his teacher, Ambrose moved the minds of his hearers; Augustine moved their hearts.  For hundreds of years, he was the doinant influence on the West.  Even in the Reformation, Protestants turned to Augustine's writings for justification.  They were where Calvin found his doctrine of predestination.  The intensely personal and passionate nature of the "Confessions," easily the best known of his works, explains why it remains one of the springs of Christian devotional life right up to the present day.   It powerfully describes a man struggling to come to terms with the raw frailties of his human nature.

     Lord,