essay

In Confessions, St. Augustine tells his life story as his passage from sin to conversion and redemption. Augustine’s sins start from infancy and continue throughout his journey to come closer to God, ending with his baptism and conversion to Catholicism. Augustine views sin as an act that happens in the absence of good, and he confesses his sins to show his readers the great forgiveness of God. St. Augustine’s life story presents his sins of the body, for sin’s sake, emotional and intellectual issues, and worldly success in Confessions as a road to conversion and he expresses his views on how his sins ultimately bring him closer to God.

A large part of Augustine’s life before his baptism consisted of his sins of bodily pleasures, especially his sexual desires. Augustine comments on how his bodily pleasures may have started from a young age, because as a baby he “knew nothing more than how to suck (breast) and to be quietened by bodily delights, and to weep when I was physically uncomfortable” (Confessions 7). Although he does not remember his own infancy, he says that sucking on his nurse and mother’s breasts was a sin because it accounts for a bodily pleasure that could have led to sexual desires later on in life. While he seems to be acting as a natural baby who needs to be breast-fed, Augustine thinks that he and other babies commit a sin with this action. When Augustine reaches adolescence, his sexual desires spike as he fornicates with many women: “The single desire that dominated my search for delight was simply to love and to be loved” (Confessions 24). His bodily desires take up his teenage years, and he cannot see the difference between “love’s serenity and lust’s darkness” (Confessions 24). Right there, he is confessing ...

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... chooses to devote his time to God rather than his worldly success.

Even though St. Augustine confesses to committing many sins before he converts to Christianity, he sums up his feelings about desires in Confessions: “There is no reliable security except with you… Its wish would be that nothing be taken away, just as nothing can be taken from you” (Confessions 32). When he accepted God, he understood that his desires are nothing compared to God, who owns all these sins. Embracing God will fulfill his greatest desire; therefore not all desires are bad. He is trying to say that our desires should not lead to committing sins; instead they should lead to God. For a while, Augustine’s desires were a part of what stopped him from converting to Christianity, but in the end, his sins just led him to become closer to God, and ultimately be baptized and forgiven of his sins.