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19th Century San Agustin de Hipona Retablo #59
$ 3,600.00
- San Agustin de Hippo Retablo
- St. Augustine of Hippo Retablo
- Late 19th Century Original Retablo Oil Painting on Tin created in Mexico.
Retablo dimensions are approx. 10 inches horizontal x 14 inches vertical.
Condition: in excellent, clean, original condition with some minor paint loss acquired over more than a century of use and devotional prayer. - St. Augustine of Hippo is the Patron Saint of brewers because of his conversion from a former life of loose living, which included parties, entertainment, and worldly ambitions. His complete turnaround and conversion has been an inspiration to many who struggle with a particular vice or habit they long to break.
- This famous son of St. Monica was born in Africa (present day Algeria). Santa Monica, is recognized by the Church as an example of a true Christian woman, of pity and goodness tested, a self-sacrificing mother always concerned for the well-being of her family, even under the most adverse circumstances.
- Monica taught her son the basic principles of the Christian religion, and when she saw how the young Augustine separated from the path of Christianity, she gave herself up to constant prayer in the midst of great suffering. Years later, Augustine will call himself "the son of his mother's tears".
- Through the prayers of his holy mother and the marvelous preaching of St. Ambrose, Augustine finally became convinced that Christianity was the one true religion. Yet he did not become a Christian then, because he thought he could never live a pure life. One day, however, he heard about two men who had suddenly been converted on reading the life of St. Anthony, and he felt terribly ashamed of himself. "What are we doing?" he cried to his friend Alipius. "Unlearned people are taking Heaven by force, while we, with all our knowledge, are so cowardly that we keep rolling around in the mud of our sins!"
- Full of bitter sorrow, Augustine flung himself out into the garden and cried out to God, "How long more, O Lord? Why does not this hour put an end to my sins?" Just then he heard a child singing, "Take up and read!" Thinking that God intended him to hear those words, he picked up the book of the Letters of St. Paul, and read the first passage his gaze fell on. It was just what Augustine needed, for in it, St. Paul says to put away all impurity and to live in imitation of Jesus. From then on, Augustine began a new life.
- He was baptized, became a priest, a bishop, a famous Christian writer. He became very devout and charitable, too. On the wall of his room he had the following sentence written in large letters: "Here we do not speak evil of anyone." St. Augustine overcame strong heresies, practiced great poverty and supported the poor, preached very often and prayed with great fervor right up until his death. "Too late have I loved You!" he once cried to God, but with his holy life he certainly made up for the sins he committed before his conversion. His feast day is August 28th.
- Augustine of Hippo's Social Ethics implies the condemnation of the injustice of wealth and the imperative of solidarity with the disadvantaged. "The riches are unfair or because you acquired them unjustly, or because they themselves are injustice, because you have and another has not; you live in abundance and another in misery.
- Agustín de Hipona also defended the good of the peace and tried to promote it pacifism.
- "To end war by word, and seek or maintain peace with peace and not with war, is a title of greater glory than killing men with the sword.
- Augustine, who had contact with the ideas of Anaximander's evolutionism, which claimed that nature is ruled by laws, just like human societies, and anything that disturbs the balance of nature does not last long. In his book The City of God, Augustine posed that God could use inferior beings (lifeforms) to create man by infusing his soul into the creature. He defended the idea that despite the existence of God, not all organisms and inertness came from Him, but some suffered evolutionary variations in historical times from God's creations.
- St. Augustine has great importance in the history of the culture of Europe . His Confessions are a model of inner biography for many authors, who will consider introspection as an important element in the literature. Descartes discovered self-consciousness, which marked the beginning of modern philosophy, copying its fundamental principle (cogito ergo sum / I think therefore I exist) not literally but close to the meaning, of St. Augustine (if in short, sum / if I am wrong, I exist: De Civ. Dei 11, 26). On the other hand, St. Augustine will be an important bridge between classical antiquity and Christian culture. The special appreciation he has for Virgil and Plato will mark strongly the later centuries.