CHAPTER XXIII.

ST. AUGUSTINE.-HIS DEATH.

ST. AUGUSTINE did not long tarry behind his blessed Father in the Faith. He fell asleep in Christ either the same year with St. Gregory, or a year or two afterwards. The last great work of his life was to consecrate Laurence, one of his original companions, and one of the two who were sent to Rome in quest of fresh missionaries, his successor in the See of Canterbury; thus following the example of St. Peter, who, before his departure hence, made a like provision for the necessities of the infant Church of Rome, by ordaining St. Clement to succeed him. It is said that St. Augustine summoned to his death-bed his great benefactor, king Ethelbert, with the members of the royal family, the new Archbishop, several of the clergy, and other persons, and that he died with benedictions and exhortations on his lips. "Pretiosa in conspectu Domini mors Sanctorum Ejus !" Oh, with what thrilling hope and bright foretastes of blessedness does the Church accompany such a soul as this in its passage to the fulness of joy! What sweetness and what power does the death of the just impart to those words of comfort, which the Church denies not to an ordinary faithful! "May the bright company of the angels meet thy soul as it leaves the body; may the conclave of the Apostles, who shall judge the world, come to receive thee; may the triumphal army of the martyrs go forth to greet thee; may the lilied band of

confessors, shining with glory, encompass thee; may the chorus of virgins hail thee with songs of joy; and mayest thou be held fast, deep in the blessings of peace, in the bosom of the patriarchs. May Christ Jesus cast on thee His mild and festive look, and, in the company of those who stand near him, acknowledge thee as His own for ever!.... Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered; let them also that hate Him flee before Him. Like as the smoke vanisheth, so shalt Thou drive them away; and like as wax melteth at the fire, so let the ungodly perish at the presence of God. But let the righteous be glad and rejoice before God. . . . Let all the legions of hell be confounded and put to shame, nor let the ministers of Satan dare to oppose thy passage. May Christ deliver thee from everlasting death, who deigned to die for thee. May Christ, the Son of the Living God, place thee in the midst of the ever-verdant gardens of His Paradise, and may He, the true Shepherd, acknowledge thee among His sheep. May He absolve thee from all thy sins, and place thee at His own right hand among the number of His elect. Mayest thou see thy Redeemer face to face, and, standing for ever by His side, mayest thou behold with happy eyes His Truth in all its brightness. Mayest thou be ranged with the multitudes of the blessed, and enjoy the sweetness of the vision of God for ever and ever.' "" 1

His body is buried in peace; his name liveth for evermore. Such is the portion of the blessed Saints in the Church on earth, while their immortal spirit is received at once into the courts above, to re-enter its glorified tabernacle at the resurrection of the just. The sacred ashes of St. Augustine were deposited in a

1 Ordo Commendationis Animæ secundùm Breviarium Romanum.

grave as near as might be to the unfinished church of St. Peter and St. Paul at Canterbury, waiting the completion of the fabric. When the church was at length capable of receiving them, they were removed within the northern porch, which from that time became the burying-place of all future archbishops of Canterbury till the time of Theodore and Berthwald, who were buried further within the church, the porch being then full. The church of St. Peter and St. Paul, which was an appendage to the monastery dedicated under the same title, and afterwards St. Augustine's, was completed, according to Thorn, in 613, in which year the body of St. Augustine was interred in its portico. In the midst of it, as St. Bede relates, was an altar sacred to St. Gregory the Great, at which every Saturday Mass was said in commemoration both of St. Gregory and St. Augustine, by a priest specially chosen for that office. At the Council of Cloveshoe, in 747, it was directed that due honours should be paid to the days both of St. Augustine's nativity and of his death.

His tomb bore the following simple inscription in the days of St. Bede.

"Here resteth the Lord Augustine, first Archbishop of Canterbury, who erewhile was sent hither by blessed Gregory, Bishop of the City of Rome, and, being helped by God to work miracles, drew over king Ethelbert and his race from the worship of idols to the Faith of Christ. Having ended in peace the days of his ministry, he departed hence seven days before the kalends of June (May 26), in the reign of the same king."

The remains of St. Augustine were afterwards, as we have said, removed into the north porch of the cathedral of Christ Church, which, in 759, received the body of

Archbishop Cuthbert, and continued to be the buryingplace of the archbishops of Canterbury till the change of religion. On the 6th of September, 1091, Abbot Wido translated the chief part of the relics into the interior of the church, leaving the remainder in the porch. Those which were translated lay for some time in a strong urn under the east window. In 1221, the head was put into a rich shrine ornamented with gold and precious stones; the rest of the bones lay in a marble tomb, enriched with fine carvings and engravings, till the dissolution. The history of the Translation has been written at length by Gocelin, the biographer of St. Augustine.

2 Rev. A. Butler.

CHAPTER XXIV.

POSTHUMOUS MIRACLES.-CONCLUSION.

ST. AUGUSTINE'S biographer, Gocelin, has left a book on Miracles wrought since the death of the Saint through the power of his relics or by the help of his intercessions. The readers of these Lives have not to be told now, for the first time, that the Church Catholic has ever accounted a singular virtue to reside in the bodies of Saints, the temples of the Holy Ghost, even after the spirit has left them to return to God who gave it. Holy Scripture distinctly warrants this comfortable belief; for if the bones of one of the elder prophets were gifted with the power of conveying life to the dead,1 how much more should miraculous virtue be expected to cleave to the relics of those blessed shrines in which the Holy Ghost has dwelt in all the largeness of measure which is promised under the Gospel! A wonderful and glorious truth is contained in that promise, of which the Athanasian Creed is the vehicle to the Church of all ages, "Omnes homines resurgere habent cum corporibus suis." These very

bodies of ours, and not merely the souls which inhabit them, are gifted with immortality, the especial fruit, as Catholic writers tell us, of participation in Christ through the Sacrament of His most blessed Body and Blood. But if a certain sanctity inhere in all the

12 Kings xiii. 21.