Augustine, Our Contemporary Friend

I grew up learning about the lives of the saints, their stories and adventures, and the fact that they are in heaven praying for us. Having gone to a Catholic elementary school, I heard about Saint Augustine of Hippo--the intellectual giant we also revere as the Doctor of Grace. Yet, it was in high school that I gradually found myself losing much of my faith, as open questions further drew me into doubt. This experience propelled me to explore Catholicism and other religions in search for objective truth.

I was restless. My heart was restless.

On a seemingly ordinary day, I found myself picking up and eventually reading Augustine’s Confessions. Within those pages I found strikingly poetic prose: words that dare to reveal the truth of one man’s humanity, and of his salvation.

The story of Augustine’s life is the striking narrative of a young man longing to find meaning among the many sorrows that plague human existence. I no longer viewed Augustine simply as an ancient churchman. He quickly became a new friend; a guide for those longing to be found. I was struck by the words he speaks to God, as if in dismay: “Why do you mean so much to me? Give me words to explain. Why do I mean so much to you that you command me to love you…take pity on me and help me. Tell me why you mean so much to me. Whisper into my heart, I am here to save you” (Confessions).

Reading the Confessions revealed that everything I am, everything I will become--the man I am meant to be is all within the mind of God. There is cultural pressure on our generation and in our society to “find ourselves”. In the Confessions I realized that it actually takes time to become the people God made us to be. We should trust that God will take His time with us even as he did with St. Augustine, for He has already found us, and redeemed us.

Young people today are unnervingly pulled into nihilism; values are baseless, and nothing can be surely known. We are told that there is no objective truth, no afterlife, no God, and so we are led to believe that there is no meaning to our existence. Saint Augustine liberated me from the trap of nihilism. Reading his autobiography I entered the adventure of a true Christian, and realized that the real meaning of our lives lies in God who He has made us for Himself:  “Our hearts are restless until they rest in You” (Confessions).

Augustine chooses to sacrifice everything for love of the Lord. His gave up his wealth, social prestige, and a life of vice to be united to the will of God for him.

In Augustine, I found a friend: a valiant witness to the choices we must make to live a life of grace. He has shown me the way forward so that I also might be receptive to the will of God. I have found peace and rest by asking the Lord for rest. And the Lord has granted me rest by placing St. Augustine in my life to show me a new way.

Not only has St. Augustine led me towards Christ in a way I previously thought impossible, but he has taught me to desire happiness in the life of virtue. My love and admiration for Saint Augustine is infinite, for he has opened my eyes to behold a Beauty that is “ever ancient and ever new”.

God-willing, we all can receive the graces to live the Christian life heroically as Saint Augustine did. Each in God’s own time, and in God’s plan for our salvation.

IVAN BREA

Ivan Brea (NYU 2023) is a current undergraduate student at The College of Arts and Science, where he is working towards a Bachelor’s degree in politics, Spanish, and Portuguese alongside a minor in Social and Public Policy.

When he is not thinking or writing about the intersection of faith, politics, and culture, you can find him assiduously reading Saint Augustine of Hippo and thinking about the theology of grace with a cup of masala chai always in reach.

Lent as a Pilgrimage with St. Joseph

What is Lent for? We can just wander through this season checking the boxes as we practice works of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving for the sake of being a “better person” and arriving at Easter. It is tempting to view Lent as merely another obligation, a time when more is expected of us. 

What if Lent is an invitation to more than this? 

While St. Joseph may not have lived the 40 day Lenten fast as we know it, we can learn how to observe Lent by the example of his life. He lived a life of silence, as we see from his relative absence and silence in the Gospels. He lived this quiet, humble life to be drawn closer to God. In his silence, he learned how to make space for God to enter into his life. In uncertainty, weakness, and discomfort, he put his confidence in the grace and power of God to guide and transform his life. He lived this disposition constantly, learning to say yes to God’s plan, to grow in trust. And in time, God entrusted the Virgin Mary and Jesus to his care. Life never got easier, and the call to be a loving provider for the Holy Family revealed his dependence on grace. But St. Joseph chose to persevere. He understood his frailty, and turned to God in his providence.  

What does this reveal to us about Lent? This season is not just one of obligations, but opportunities to invite Christ into our lives and to let Him transform us. We hear from Scripture “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.” When we fill our time with distractions, we miss the opportunities for contemplation, and the peace that Christ brings. Observing silence is the initial step, and this allows the Lord to enter into our poverty and brokenness and to redeem it.

Behold, Christ is before us as he was before St. Joseph in Nazareth! How will we respond to the call of his mercy and love? Will we come to encounter Christ during this season? Will we learn to encounter Him in the days beyond, as the one who is RISEN?

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IMAGE CREDITS: Philippe de Champaigne | The Dream of Saint Joseph, 1642. The National Gallery, London

Rachael Eichenberger

Rachael Eichenberger (NYU ‘23) was born in the wonderful state of Washington, and grew up in a small town called Lake Stevens. She is currently studying Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering.

After encountering Christ in the people at the Catholic Center and at SEEK21, she has grown in her desire to follow the Lord and draw close to Him. She was received into the Catholic Church Easter 2021. She loves baking desserts, going on strenuous hikes, and finds joy in getting to know her spiritual family of brothers and sisters on earth and in heaven.

The Ashes of Ash Wednesday

“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” 

A grim statement, to say the least. Today, the Gloria goes silent, the Liturgy urges penitence, and the vestments shift to a muted purple hue. All this serves as a reminder—a reality check if you will—that one day, the hour of our death will come.

But why ashes? Why not charcoal, dirt, or dust? What makes ashes so different?

Ashes are the residue left behind by heat and flames—the flames of cleansing, a holy fire that consumes all the imperfections of whatever is cast into it. What is not a hard metal—a metal mined in the struggle for virtue and shaped by grace—will be reduced to nothing. The black ashes form a cross on our foreheads, as if the Cross of Calvary were already casting a shadow from the day of the Lord’s Passion that comes end of these forty days.

The number forty has a special significance in the Sacred Scriptures: Moses spent forty days on Mount Sinai, the Israelites spent forty years waiting in the desert, Jesus spent forty days praying before beginning his public ministry. Lent is likewise forty days long. It is a time marked by intensified prayer, sincere repentance, and especially by careful preparation.

So, what are we preparing for?

Our bodies will disintegrate. Our friends and families may forget our names, and the memory of our works on earth will fade away with time. All this may seem a grim reality, but it is not the end. It is a beginning.

Ash Wednesday is not the last day, but the first day of preparation. If we take this time to prepare our hearts and minds to receive the Lord, the day of Resurrection will be all the more glorious.

Take this time to think of what preparations you can make that will burn away vices and leave the soul strong. Think of what sacrifices the Lord will delight in receiving. What parts of me can I leave to ashes, and what can I ask the Lord to strengthen?

All we do is temporary, but the day of life will soon be at hand. We are signed by his Cross and share in his Blood, so let us prepare ourselves to die with Christ. For one day He will raise us up, and his eternal Gloria will sound sweetly.

Francis Xavier Hovland

NYU | 2025

Francis Xavier Hovland (NYU 2025) is the Catholic Center’s tallest student. He studies Film and Television, and one day hopes to use the camera to see the world through God’s eyes.

Francis loves going to movie theaters, drawing, and snow despite not owning snow-boots. He is NYU’s self-proclaimed #1 SpongeBob aficionado.

Injustice is Easy to Find

Injustice is easy to find. Every day, people break their word, slander and insult others, deface property, blaspheme, dodge duties, elude laws, and lie. These deeds offend God, hurt others, and deform the people who do them. Anger is our natural response to injustice, for we want the transgressor punished and justice restored. When guided by reason, anger’s ultimate end is justice, and it is good. Its flames can refine society, but they can also blaze out of control, burning what they should purify.

Injustice is easy to find among any group of people, so it is easy to provoke anger against any group. Journalists, talk-show hosts, and politicians often take advantage of this by compiling clips of their ideological enemies committing crimes or asserting absurdities. These compilations are popular because they make politics easy: we don’t need to listen to those with whom we disagree when we have evidence that their side is full of vicious idiots. The practice is manipulative. Encountering the worst of a group we disagree with makes us angry, often unreasonably so. Continuing to watch such clips builds resentment and suspicion towards others. They magnify and photograph the specks in our neighbors’ eyes with no mention of the logs in our own.

The season’s hyper-focus on politics tempts us to view injustice solely as a political problem caused by ideological opponents. We’re tempted to see every voter as directly abetting the worst judgements of the politicians they support, and we’re tempted to rebuke them out of anger instead of a desire for justice. These temptations are dangerous. They make perceived injustice inflame our anger and burn our reason away. 

In the words of St. Benedict, the resentment that such anger feeds creates an “evil zeal of bitterness which separates from God and leads to hell.” Someone may have good judgment and a deep understanding of justice, but if these combine with bitterness and anger he can lose sight of his well-reasoned goal. Disputing others becomes a self-satisfying end. “I showed him,” one may say, yet the point of an argument is to establish truth, not to win victory. Seeking victory over truth makes us unjust, it prompts us to slander or misrepresent or lie. It is important to judge and correct, indeed we are called to judge angels (1 Cor 6:3), but we must not let our anger mold us into ideological gladiators. If someone offends us, we’re called to forgive. We should not respond to slander with slander nor broad strokes with broad strokes.

Truth and justice matter. We should work for them. Yet if we slander others, if we commit injustices out of a desire for justice, or if we lose sight of reconciliation, then our zeal is a false zeal. It is the zeal of bitterness and not the zeal of justice. The hunger and thirst for justice that Jesus teaches is greater. It forgives as it condemns, it invites as it corrects, and it attacks the injustice within the heart before it looks to the injustice outside. Injustice is easy to find, and if we respond to it wickedly, we only make it more manifest.

This essay is cross posted from Dominicana and is reposted with permission.

BR. CYRIL STOLA, O.P.

Br. Cyril Stola (NYU 2017) grew up in rural Huntington Mills, Pennsylvania. He studied economics at New York University where he met the Dominican Friars through The Catholic Center. “The preaching of the Dominicans at NYU introduced me to the riches of the Catholic intellectual tradition and brought me to a much deeper love of God. Through life in the Order I hope to imitate those friars in bringing others to that same love.”

Mother | Lend Me Your Heart

Peter Paul Rubens | The Immaculate Conception | 1628-29, Oil on Canvas, Museo del Prado, Madrid.

What does it mean to believe? To sing that we do?

On CREDO, we are delighted to feature student faith profiles: witness accounts of the Faith, alive in us, and among us.

Today, we meet Julie Pirro.

Julie has just released an EP record, and a single titled “Mother.” She plays guitar and piano, and songwriting has helped Julie deepen her faith.

We asked her how “Mother” came to her as a song idea. The 33 Day Marian Consecration that students participated in last fall at The Catholic Center was monumental in this journey, and since then Julie has prayed a daily rosary on her walk to campus. She was struck by the beauty of seeing Mary as our Mother, and the power of her intercession. Mary is a sure way to Jesus: "she knows us and still wants us", Julie says.

Julie shared that she wrote “Mother” over several weeks, with inspiration striking at random days and times. In returning to the first verse, Julie initially wanted to change it, but decided to keep it to remain truthful to her prior struggle with feeling undeserving of divine love and mercy. The rest of the song is more positive, and reflects a conversion in her own understanding of faith, and through faith.

Programs at the Catholic Center have inspired Julie to continue journeying closer to God. Attending the FOCUS Seek conference, and her weekly Bible Study have helped Julie to learn more about her faith, and to grow in genuine friendship!

For Julie, the Faith is now integrated in a whole way of life. Her humanity is now a witness of the reality of love and mercy that she believes in.

We are pleased to feature Julie Pirro’s creative work on CREDO. Listen to her newest song, “Mother”, on Soundcloud.

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Julie Pirro (NYU 2022) is majoring in Music Technology and minoring in Computer Science. She mainly plays guitar, but has started playing piano, especially while composing new songs. She sees music as a way to express her journey in faith, and music has helped her see her own spiritual growth. Julie loves sports, and plays on the NYU Softball team. She mentors with 4-H, and likes to cook! Julie loves animals, and enjoys the beauty of the natural world.

He IS The Passion

Antonio Ciseri, Ecce Homo: Behold the Man! | 1860-1880 | Oil on Canvas, Museo Cantonale dell’Arte, Lugano, Switzerland

Inception of the Passion

What did the Greeks ask after someone died?

“Did he have passion, did he harp like Homer?

or weep for blood, was he in tragic form?

Why, yes, for he was good, a man from grace

That fell from us to Hades’ red disgrace!” 

Fiction’s not Truth, forsooth, ‘tis fantasy;

Yet fiction r’mains the lifeblood of our time.

O, Juliet, she was in Love with Ro,

But soft, hers’ was a life within a show.

Truth, O, Truth, He did listen to our cries.

He fell from heaven—led himself to die!

Then, some Greeks asked: “Hey, did He have passion?”

To which some other Greeks responded: “No.

He is the passion, boiled in sweat and tears.

Weeping the blood of heaven and of men,”

A crucifix he donned, a gentleman.

Now, we ask: “Hey, was their passion like Christ’s?”

That holy litmus test to pass Him on

Into the hands of lit’rature and men—

dads, moms, teachers, brothers, angels and saint—

Were they like Christ? Yes, Yes, in fact, they are

Christ.

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Charlie Fox is a native of Chicago, Illinois. He attends the NYU School of Professional Studies (Class of 2020) as a Humanities Major with a Creative Writing Concentration. Charlie began writing poetry at age eight and hasn’t stopped since. He is grateful to his mentors along the way: Brandon Woods, David Marshall, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Gerard Manley Hopkins among others. More of his work is at www.charliefox.space.

Science, Contemplated

Prefatory miniature from a moralized Bible, "God as Architect of the World", Paris ca. 1220–1230 A.D. | Ink, tempera, and gold leaf on vellum | Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.

The other day I learned that neurons in a primate’s early visual system break down visual information into simple geometrical shapes. I then wondered: how can they know what a line is?  Or a square? Who told them? 

Scientifically, the story is a little more complicated than this: one should rather say that these neurons are in fact tuned in such a way that they respond strongly to stimuli with certain characteristics.  Said characteristics are often gradients in different orientations, moving at different speeds, and in different directions, and these loosely correspond to statistical measurements of natural images that we can track.  It is not clear how this tuning comes about: are these neurons hardwired in a certain way? Are they the survivors of the natural selection process? 

What I have just described is but one example of the intellectual crossroads a scientist will encounter many times in their years of training.  I studied physics as an undergraduate, and I never really accepted the atomistic conception of reality; there is, after all, something odd about thinking of our own brains as just atoms and molecules; something perhaps even insidious. 

It is tempting to shelve this sort of contemplative intellectual exercise in order to progress to the next item on the long experimental to-do list.  But I submit that the failure to tackle these questions, not only once, but continuously throughout one’s scientific career is a good recipe for bad logic, and ultimately bad science. 

What is the central question, then? We can pose it this way: How do we reconcile what we learn in our scientific endeavors with the reality of our everyday lives? I do not mean that we ought to come up with a humanitarian or societal application each of our endeavors: there are some things worth knowing for their own sake. 

In more precise terms, if we accept we have the capacity to know unified, unaltered reality, what do we make of contradicting claims about the fabric of our world? How can a scientist who is not philosophically trained hold to the truths of everyday mechanics when his quantum work tells him that liquids do go up the walls of containers?

I submit that faith is the path that allows the scientist to hope, against all data, for the harmonious reconciliation of his/her knowledge with the truth about the world, and the ultimate meaning of our existence in it.  Unfortunately there are few historically uncontentious and relevant examples to prove this thesis, so it would be difficult to advance it in itself. We do not lack books claiming the abolishment of free will, the non-existence of matter, and the reducibility of human life to that of simple beasts.  With such blatant philosophical impossibilities before us, it is not difficult to posit the contrary: to hope that there may be a way to genuinely recover reality. 

I propose some simple considerations: (1) that persons have the capacity to devote themselves to multiple, fairly independent areas of study, (2) that, epistemologically, none of these areas of study can eliminate the need for a human agency, (3) that religion engages all of the capacities of the human person, and therefore religion is the best way back from discordant speculation to embodied reality.  One may argue that philosophy holds this promise, but while not all called to be philosophers, surely all can believe by grace. 

I wish to be clear here, I do not advocate a compromise solution where both theological and scientific truths suffer by reduction.  What I have tried to delineate is a simple representation of the way the devout Catholic scholar and scientist lives: in honest pursuit of both divine and human wisdom, driven by the living hope that these are but two wings of the same eagle flying towards the first principle, who deemed in His infinite Wisdom to reveal Himself to men. 

Catholics are fortunate to have a long history of theological,  philosophical, and scientific interchange. Perhaps we won’t be able to come up with a Trinitarian, or Christological theory of general relativity, but at the very least we can, like Aquinas, bow our head and weep at the altar when our highly sophisticated lab programs do not compute.  Perhaps God knows C++, or Python, or Java, better than we do.  

Often, reason needs to rest with the Almighty. 

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Rui Diaz-Pacheco was born and grew up in Mexico. He always dreamed of becoming an astronaut, so he studied physics and mathematics at Columbia University. But he did not know that God was planning to send him to even greater heights. While at Columbia, Rui became a Roman Catholic in his sophomore year. Rui now works as an assistant researcher at The Center for Neural Science at NYU, and participates in the programs of The Catholic Center. He really wishes he were a philosopher. 

The Vocation of the Student

Benozzo Gozzoli | St. Augustine Reading the Epistle of St Paul , 1464-65 | Apsidal chapel, Sant'Agostino, San Gimignano

To be Catholic means making a statement with our lives. It is to publicly proclaim: “I believe what the Catholic Church teaches to be true—doctrinally, morally”. This will put us at odds with the world. However, the Gospel has a message of mercy and hope for our generation: “The time is accomplished, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent and believe in the Gospel.” (Mark 1, 15). While the promise of the kingdom of God is a delightful one, it is natural for a rational being to be hesitant to radically change his or her life when there are yet so many questions to be addressed.

Some questions that troubled me before committing myself to Catholicism, and that I believe other young people may ask themselves are: What does it mean to be “relevant”? What makes something worth doing? What is friendship? What is love? Is there anybody out there who is interested in me in an unselfish and un-objectifying way? Anybody who can understand me?

As a student, I began to find answers to some of these questions at The Catholic Center at NYU. I was attracted to The Catholic Center by the beautiful art hanging on the walls, and the library filled with ancient and contemporary texts that transmit the Catholic faith. FOCUS missionaries are present simply to be friends to students, to introduce them to other people and to invite them to Mass, Adoration, rosary prayers, Bible studies, or social events.  It has been here that my Catholic Faith has absolutely been deepened. Not only did God grant me to form strong and virtuous friendships, but also to exercise my intellect, and to deepen my spiritual life and prayer. I learned more about philosophy and theology through study groups, and I began to attend daily Mass, Adoration, Confession, and to pray the Liturgy of the Hours.

A quote I read in The Life of St. Catherine of Siena, by Raymond of Capua, helped me to detach myself from many old habits, and to begin to strive toward sanctity: “Do you know daughter, who you are and who I am? If you know these two things you have beatitude in your grasp. You are she who is not. I AM HE WHO IS.”

The vocation of the student is to pursue truth. This is easier said than done because one’s opinions and the truth do not always coincide. The pursuit of truth is naturally a very humbling pursuit, but also a very fulfilling one. It takes courage to pursue truth because the truth reveals us to ourselves, and this can be a daunting realization. What if if one finds that the way he has been living does not align with the truth about the dignity of the human person?

The pursuit of truth often requires a change of attitude and action, even of career path, and this is easier said than done. As an NYU student I pursued a major in computer science, but recently decided to pursue truth in the fields of philosophy and theology at another institution because of the convictions that I developed as I grew in my Catholic Faith. The truth challenges us in unexpected ways.

Students need to discover that Truth is a person—Christ, and learn to hear the voice of the Truth in this world where it is often silenced.

Considering our academic and social culture, may we hear and obey Christ’s loving and tender command: “Come to me, all you that labor, and are burdened, and I will refresh you. Take up my yoke upon you, and learn from me, because I am meek, and humble of heart: and you shall find rest to your souls. For my yoke is sweet and my burden light.” (Matthew 11, 28-30).

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Guilherme Soares is from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and studied computer science at NYU Tandon.

“Follow ME”

As Jesus passed by, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post. He said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him (Mt 9:9).

We hear little else about the apostle Matthew from the Gospels. Much of what we know of him is inferred from his former occupation. He was likely wealthy: he had both a house large enough to host a banquet for Jesus and the means to feed all the guests (Lk 5:29). He served the dreaded Roman Empire, and because of this he would be scorned by his compatriots. As a tax collector, his wages came from adding a portion of his choosing to the amount his countrymen were due to pay. It was a system that encouraged greed and theft, and to make matters worse those taxes funded an empire that Israel detested. Thus, by the vice of his office Matthew was a public sinner who lived far outside the realm of religious respectability. Matthew’s profession made him a person to avoid, and indeed the Pharisees rightly criticized tax collectors like Matthew for their greed at the expense of their neighbors. Yet when Jesus called Matthew away from that contemptible state to a life of sacrifice and righteousness, he responded with docility. By grace he knew that Jesus’ call was greater than all else, and so “he got up and followed him.”

Elsewhere in the Gospel of Matthew we meet a man who lived an upright life and whom we might expect to be more suitable for preaching the Kingdom of God, a fellow known to us as the rich young man. The rich young man was good and sought to be better. Once he heard about the teacher Jesus, he had the initiative to seek him out and to ask him what he should do to have eternal life. At first, Jesus told the rich young man that he should keep the commandments, but he already observed them as well as any God-fearing man could. He then asked what else he might do, yet when Jesus told the rich young man, “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (Mt 19:21), he was not willing to accept the burden. He went away sorrowful. He wanted to be a spiritually strong man, and to this end he was offered a gift of far greater worth than he could ever expect: companionship with Christ. Yet when offered this gift, he found that he would rather keep to his own path and cling to his own things than pay the price of that gift: abandonment to the will of God.

Both St. Matthew and the rich young man were called to give up their wealth and to follow Jesus in order to inherit eternal life. The rich young man explicitly desired eternal life, and he knew that following God’s precepts was necessary. The rich young man lived virtuously, but his heart was divided. He was separated from God, not because he committed many sins, but because he had an inordinate attachment to wealth and comforts. Saint Matthew, on the other hand, was docile. He had no conditions for God. When St. Matthew responded to Jesus’ call, he accepted that he needed to turn away from a sinful profession, and he gave up all he had. He needed to do both, and by that double abandonment of sin and wealth, he was able to give himself totally to Jesus, and now he lives with him in eternity.

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This essay is cross posted from Dominicana, and was originally titled “Call and Response”.

Reposted with permission.

Br. Cyril Stola, O.P. entered the Order of Preachers in 2017. He is a graduate of New York University (2017) where he studied economics. He entered the order shortly after graduation.