Augustine's Tears in Milan

On the night of April 24, 387 AD, in the great basilica of Milan, a forty-two-year-old rhetoric professor named Aurelius Augustinus stepped down into the baptismal waters. Bishop Ambrose placed his hands on the head of the man who had spent decades running — through Carthage's lecture halls, through Manichaean philosophy, through a mistress and a son born out of wedlock, through every intellectual escape route a brilliant mind could devise.

When Augustine came up from the water, he wept. His mother Monica, who had prayed for his conversion for over thirty years, stood watching from the congregation, her own tears falling freely. Augustine later wrote in his Confessions that in that moment, all the anxiety of his former life simply melted away. The restless heart had finally found its rest.

What happened to Augustine in Milan is an echo of what happened at the Jordan centuries before. When Jesus rose from the waters of John's baptism, the heavens tore open and the voice of the Almighty declared, "You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased." It was not information for Jesus — it was proclamation. Identity named aloud before the work began.

Every one of us who has come up gasping from the waters of repentance has heard some version of that same voice — the Holy One who speaks not just to His Son, but through His Son, to every wandering soul willing to get wet: You are mine. You are loved. Now begin.