The month of August is, for all of us who are part of the Augustinian Family, an excellent opportunity to deepen our understanding of the legacy we have received from the great Saint Augustine and how the figure of this saint is able to speak to today’s society even though we are separated from his time by several centuries.
It is true that St. Augustine is recognized, respected and admired above all for his vast philosophical and theological work, but it is equally true that the choices he made along the path of his life are no less eloquent of the category of this saint.
To dedicate his life and his talent to seeking to give a well-informed and thoughtful response to the issues that reality posed to him is something laudable, but the intellectual depth he reached did not remain in theories, but was translated into his daily life, which was not alien to what he had been discovering in his inner self as the most valuable.
“The intellectual depth he achieved did not remain in theories, but was translated into his day-to-day life, which was not unrelated to what he had been discovering inside himself as the most valuable.”
When we hear the verb to bet, surely the first thing that comes to mind is to risk a certain amount of money or some asset in the belief that our favorite soccer team will win the league, or to do the same in the belief that a certain situation will be resolved in a certain way.
However, there is a less usual sense in which we employ this same verb, and in which we imply quite a bit more than a sum of money.
If we say that we bet on someone or something, we usually mean to put our total trust and energy -in short, our being- in favor of them, even knowing the nuance of uncertainty or risk that the verb itself implies.
If anything characterizes St. Augustine, it is that, like other saints, he knew how to listen to his heart in order to know on what and for what to bet his life.
At the beginning of this year I had an experience that made me think a lot about one of the stakes that was clear to Agustín from very early on: community.
In the formation house, we usually take advantage of the time off that the faculty leaves us to carry out volunteer experiences.
Normally, each year the type of experience varies, and last January I was with a group of brothers in Sierra Elvira, in Granada itself, where we shared two weeks with the people who live in the Foundation School of Solidarity.
FES – as the Foundation is known – is conceived as a project that seeks to help people who live in situations of exclusion, uprooting, disadvantage or mistreatment and who have not experienced – or cannot experience – a sense of family, to do so by integrating into this community.
The project dates back some 40 years, when a young Ignacio Pereda Pérez began to take in minors in vulnerable situations.
His original idea evolved so as not to leave the minors homeless when they reached the age of majority, and today it is a community made up of around 120 people, including volunteers and fostered children.
“It is enough for a single person to bet on the reality of a real community with these characteristics for things to take shape and color.”
If coexistence within more or less homogeneous groups is already complicated, let us think of what could become of sharing life in a community space of people from the most diverse geographic, cultural, religious and age backgrounds.
However, it is enough for a single person to bet on the reality of a true community with these characteristics for things to take shape and color.
Meeting Ignacio, the heart that has been dreaming of the Foundation all these years, is an experience.
He is always able to see the best possible side of things and to highlight with real interest and encouragement the achievements or skills that everyone has, without ceasing to call for reflection when necessary.
Witnessing the way she faced the Foundation’s journey every morning in the daily meeting or her insistence on the need for everyone to get involved in the community’s journey and to be interested in continuing to create spaces to get to know each other in depth is to be able to put a face to the verb “to bet”.
The road has not been easy, but the renewed energy with which he transmitted every day what was happening and the initiatives that were projected in the community was more than contagious, and seeing this during the days I shared there made me think a lot about the strength that must have had the look of Agustín on his community project and his bet on friendship.
St. Augustine, as we know, was convinced of the way of life that he wanted to adopt together with his friends and those who wanted to join them in the common life, seeking to have one heart and one soul directed towards God.
St. Augustine and Ignatius are aware that the ideal presented to us in the book of the Acts of the Apostles is just that: an ideal, but they have not ceased to strive to make it a reality and to spread this spirit to many others.
“St. Augustine invites us to bet on community.”
In a world in which the immediate, the practical, the “easy” or the solitary path triumphs, St. Augustine invites us to bet on community, to bet on building a world in which, starting from our experience as brothers in the small community, we can make everyone be and feel an indispensable part of the great family of the children of God, of the people who walk as one towards their God moved by His same love, which they recognize within themselves.
May we continue to keep alive the legacy of our father St. Augustine in this and in many other aspects.