Click the image to listen. Keep reading below for a quote from Augustine about the hymns.
When Augustine wrote his famous work known as The Confessions, he mentions his return to Milan and these hymns. The passage below is found in Book 9 and is well worth the read. I find the anecdotal note about Alypius’s icy feet a little humorous. Wish I had included an Icy Feet song in the Return to Milan album. Anyways, enough chatter from me… here is the full quote. Hope you find it encouraging and enlightening!
Then, when the time came for me to give in my name, we left the country and returned to Milan.
Alypius also decided to be reborn in you along with me. He had already clothed himself in the humility fitting for your sacraments, and, as a very strong master of his body, he even went so far—by an unusual boldness—as to tread the icy Italian ground with bare feet.
We also drew to ourselves the boy Adeodatus, my son according to the flesh, born from my sin.
You had made him well, Lord. He was almost fifteen years old, and by his intelligence he surpassed many serious and learned men. I confess your gifts to you, Lord my God, creator of all things, so mighty in reshaping what in us is misshapen; for as far as I was concerned, I had nothing in that boy except my sin. That he was being brought up by us in your discipline was something you inspired in us, no one else. I confess your gifts to you.
There is a little book of mine called On the Teacher: in it he speaks with me.
You know that all the ideas put there into the mouth of my conversation partner are his, when he was sixteen years old. I experienced many other, even more wonderful things in him. That mind of his filled me with a kind of fearful awe—for who but you is the craftsman of such marvels?
You quickly took his life away from the earth; and now I remember him with a calmer heart, fearing nothing anymore for his childhood, or his adolescence, or in any way for that person. We had joined him, our contemporary, together with us in your grace, to be raised in your discipline; and we were baptized, and the anxiety about our past life fled from us.
In those days I could not get my fill of that astonishing sweetness, as I contemplated the height of your plan for the salvation of the human race.
How greatly I wept during your hymns and songs, deeply moved by the sweet singing of your Church! Those voices flowed into my ears, and the truth was distilled into my heart; the emotion of devotion welled up from there, and tears ran down, and I rejoiced in them.
Not long before this, the Church of Milan had begun to practice this kind of consolation and encouragement, with great zeal from the brothers who sang together with one voice and one heart. It had been about a year, or not much more, since Justina—the mother of the boy-king Valentinian—had begun persecuting your servant Ambrose because of her heresy, having been deceived by the Arians.
The faithful people kept watch in the church, ready to die with their bishop, your servant. There my mother—your handmaid—was among the first in care and in vigilance, living in continual prayer. We ourselves were still cold from the heat of your Spirit, yet even we were stirred as the whole city stood amazed and shaken.
Then it was decided that hymns and psalms should be sung, following the custom of the Eastern churches, so that the people would not waste away under the weariness of sorrow. And from that time to the present this practice has been kept, now by many—indeed almost all—of your congregations, and even the rest of the world has imitated it.
Then you revealed to your bishop—your servant already mentioned—through a vision where the bodies of the martyrs Protasius and Gervasius were hidden, bodies you had stored for so many years, incorrupt, in the secret treasure-house of your keeping, until the right moment to bring them forth to restrain the fury of that woman, though she was a queen.
For when these relics were uncovered, unearthed, and carried with due honor to the Ambrosian basilica, not only were those healed who were tormented by unclean spirits—who openly confessed the demons afflicting them—but also a certain man, blind for many years and well-known both to the city and its citizens. When he asked and learned the reason for the joyful uproar of the crowd, he leapt up and asked his guide to take him there.
When he was brought to the place, he asked to be admitted so that he might touch, with a cloth, the bier holding the precious bodies of your holy martyrs—whose death is precious in your sight. When he had done so, and had brought the cloth to his eyes, they were instantly opened.
From there the report spread; from there your praises burned bright; from there the mind of that hostile woman—though not brought to the health of faith—was nevertheless restrained from her frenzy of persecution.
I thank you, my God. How did you lead my memory to this point, that I should confess these things to you, which I had forgotten and passed over though they were great? And yet, at that time, when the fragrance of your ointments was so strong, we still did not run after you; and therefore I wept all the more during the singing of your hymns—once sighing for you, and at last beginning to breathe again, as far as one can breathe in a house of straw.
