Augustine: A Voice for All Generations

Hosted by Catholic author and radio-TV personality Mike Aquilina, this fascinating portrait of the Christian intellectual whose influence has endured for 16 centuries was filmed in Milan and Rome. Part of the appeal of St. Augustine's story lies in the fact that he stumbled through life until finding the answers he sought in God. Born in the 4th century in what is now Algeria to a pagan intellectual father and a Christian mother, Augustine was raised to be an educated man of culture but instead became a rebellious pleasure-seeker. Still, the future saint had blazing intelligence, which led him to seek wisdom, although he was ambivalent about where he might find it. Helped by various patrons, Augustine became a success in Carthage and Rome as a for-hire orator, a secular professional who was drawn—albeit at arm's length—to Christian thinkers such as Bishop Ambrose of Milan. Pulled away from Christianity for nearly a decade by the promise of secret knowledge from the Manicheans, Augustine eventually found himself caught between several competing faiths, a situation that reached a crisis during a showdown between Ambrose's Christians and the Empress Justina's Aryans. The film takes viewers on Augustine's long, lurching road to conversion and his eventual establishment of religious communities in Carthage and Rome, while also covering various details regarding his personal life—including the loss of a beloved concubine and their son. Highly recommended. Aud: P. (T. Keogh)