The Moment Augustine Put On the Light

In the summer of 386 AD, a thirty-one-year-old rhetoric professor sat weeping in a garden in Milan. Augustine of Hippo had spent years chasing ambition, pleasure, and philosophy, always restless, always hungry for something he could not name. He knew the truth of Christ intellectually, but he could not release his grip on the old life. "Give me chastity," he had once prayed, "but not yet."

Then he heard a child's voice from a neighboring house, singing a simple phrase: tolle lege — "take up and read." Augustine picked up the scroll of Paul's letter to the Romans, and his eyes fell on these very words: "Put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light... clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ."

He needed to read no further. In that instant, Augustine later wrote, "a light of certainty flooded my heart and all the darkness of doubt vanished." The man who had been sleeping through a spiritual dawn finally woke up. He abandoned his prestigious career, was baptized by Ambrose, and became one of the most influential voices in the history of the faith.

Paul's urgent call echoes across the centuries to every soul still lingering in the comfortable dark: the night is nearly over. The hour has come to wake from slumber, to strip off what no longer fits, and to clothe yourself with Christ. The light is already breaking. Will you step into it?