The third thing St. Augustine asked God for

HIPPO REGIUS, Numidia, these weeks, 430 AD — Saint Augustine sat down to a meal in his house these weeks, with the bishops sheltering there. He told them he had been asking God for three things. The third was his own death.

Hippo is shut in. The Vandals came up to the walls at the end of May, and they have been out there ever since. They hold all the ground outside. They have shut the city off from the sea too, so nothing gets in or out. Hippo has strong walls, and the city has not fallen.

St. Augustine is seventy-five, and he has been a priest or a bishop in this city for almost forty years. The priests of his church live in his house with him, and none of them owns anything of his own.

A house full of bishops with nothing

The bishops of the towns around Hippo have moved into that house. They came inside the walls as the invaders took their towns, and they have stayed. They came in with nothing of their own. One of them is St. Possidius, bishop of Calama, whose own city fell to the Vandals. In all of Africa only three churches have survived: Carthage, Cirta and Hippo.

Since the city was sealed off, the bishops in the house have talked about almost nothing else. They talk about the judgments of God, happening in front of their own eyes. Over and over they have said the same verse to one another: “Righteous art thou, O Lord, and upright are thy judgments.” They have wept, and they have asked God for the strength to get through the siege.

They all eat with St. Augustine at one table, the way the priests of his house always have. What is on it is plain: herbs and lentils, and always wine. There is meat only for a guest, or for a brother who needs it. The spoons are silver, and the dishes are clay, wood or marble. St. Augustine could have had better and chose not to.

He stopped the talk at the table

They were eating together and talking when St. Augustine broke in. He said: “I would have you know that in this time of our misfortune I ask this of God: either that He may be pleased to free this city which is surrounded by the foe, or if something else seems good in His sight, that He make His servants brave for enduring His will, or at least that He may take me from this world unto Himself.”

He was asking God for three things. Either God would free the city, or God would make his servants brave enough to bear whatever He wanted, or God would take him out of this world. The third of those was his own death.

Then he taught them the words. Every man at that table prayed them after him. They prayed for the men in the room, for the other bishops elsewhere, and for everyone else inside the city.