The quotations from St. Augustine are entirely appropriate and belong to a wide area of works, from the Commentaries on the Psalms, Sermons, Confessions, his treatise On Virginity, even the little known works as On Continence, the little book about his Pelagian dispute On Marriage and Concupiscence.
The encyclical has not forgotten one of the Augustinian icons of faith, that of the woman who suffered from hemorrhages (Lk 8:45-46), to whom St. Augustine has alluded in many of his sermons (243,2; 244,3; 245, 3 and others), showing very clearly, as the Pope indicates, the great difference between touching Christ without faith, out of mere habit, and touching him with faith, as that woman did. Hence, and as expression of what faith is, the encyclical has chosen a beautiful Augustinian phrase: “To touch with the heart, this is faith” (s. 229L, 2).
Word that illumines
St. Augustine discovered in Platonic and Neo-Platonic philosophy a series of truths that helped him, on one part, to surpass the Manichean thought and philosophy, and on the other, to discover in Greek philosophy the “seeds of the Word”, that is the truths of faith that were hidden in the pagan philosophical thought. However, Christian revelation will take him beyond the limits of pagan philosophy, until he discovers that the light that illumines the mysteries of man is the light of the Word made flesh.
Faith, therefore, as the Pope indicates, is a light and at the same time a Word. A Word that illumines, as what happened to St. Augustine in the Garden of Milan, when he heard the words – “Take and read” that came from the neighboring house, that invited him to take in his hands the letter of St. Paul and read the invitation of God to conversion. In the encyclical a reference is made to the famous scene in which St. Augustine, in the light of the Word of God that he reads, feels being moved towards conversion.
It is about a passage to which Benedict XVI has already made reference in a homily he delivered on April 22 of 2007, in Pavia (Italy), when he spoke about the three conversions of St. Augustine. Nevertheless, now this allusion to St. Augustine goes further. The importance of the Word as light that illumines the heart of man is stressed. For this reason, a text from the Augustinian treatise On the Trinity is cited in which it is expressly stated that Christ is: “the word that shines inside man.