St. Augustine, Bishop, Doctor of the Church (Memorial)
From this mornings Office of Readings, part of St. Augustine's Confessions:
Late have I loved you, O beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I found you! Your were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispel my my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.
This are some of the most beautiful words in the treasury of Christian writing on conversion.
St. Augustine is the patron saint of my Diocese, coincidentally called the Diocese of St. Augustine. Florida was sighted by ship on the eve of his feast day. The city of St. Augustine which is the oldest city in the United States was also where the first Mass was said in the U.S. The name of the city is also pronounced differently than how we pronounce the saints name. In a geographical sneer the city named after his mother Santa Monica is on the opposite coast in California.
Known as 
St. Monica is probably praying as hard as she can for the salvation of (the peoploe's republic of)Santa Monica CA and especially for her patron parish St. Monica's, home of Arnold 'the terminator' and other Hollyweird types.
Just curious: In what year was that first Mass in the U.S. at St. Augustine celebrated?
Chris, here are some details.
When on September 8, 1565 Pedro Menéndez de
Avilés and his 800 Spanish settlers founded the settlement of St. Augustine in La Florida, the landing party celebrated a Mass of Thanksgiving, and, afterward, Menéndez laid out a meal to which he invited as guests the native Seloy tribe who occupied the site. The celebrant of the Mass was St. Augustine’s first pastor, Father Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales, and the feast day in the church calendar was that of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. What
exactly the Seloy natives thought of those strange liturgical proceedings we do not know, except that, in his personal chronicle, Father Lopez wrote that “the Indians imitated all they saw done."
the website is good and gave me lots of help with my homework , but please could you include something about the choices St.Augustine had to make?
thankx