Giving thanks to God for the many blessings received throughout our history, we are writing to all our brothers and sisters who have been called to follow Jesus Christ within the context of the spirituality and life-enriching experience of St. Augustine and Augustinian community life (Eph. 1, 3).

Just as the entire Church celebrated in the year 2000 a Jubilee year, that is, a time of grace, joy and converson[1], we invite all of our brothers and sisters in the Augustinian families to join with us in celebrating an “Augustinian Jubilee” centered upon three important events which we will commemorate over the next three years:

1. The year 2004 is the 1650^th anniversary of the birth of St. Augustine, on the 13^th of November, 354.

2. The year 2005 is the 700^th anniversary of the death of St. Nicholas of Tolentine, the first Augustinian saint who was canonized; September 10^th, 1305.

3. The year 2006 will be the 750^th anniversary of the Grand Union of the Order, brought about by the papal bull Licet Ecclesiae of Pope Alexander IV, on the 9^th of April, 1256.

It is our hope and our prayer that the celebration of these events will unite us all in a spirit of joy, and that it will strengthen us in our faith, fill us with hope and renew our spirit of fraternal love, as we live out our commitment to serve God in our world.

In times that are characterized by an ongoing and accelerating rate of change, the importance of remembering – a historical memory – increases in significance for individuals, communities and institutions. The same is true for us, as members of Augustinian families, who also wish to remember and to interpret once again – just as Augustine did in his Confessions – the experiences that have made us the people we are today. We do this from the perspective of faith, not to feel satisfied with what we have accomplished, but to discover in our history and in our experiences the many ways in which God has shown his love to us. We give thanks to God, from whose Providence all good gifts come, and whose mercy brings healing to all human weakness.[2]

From this perspective, we remember in a special way the life and example of St. Augustine, who is constantly “present in the life of the Church and in the mind and the culture of all Western civilization”[3], “eminent member of the Body of the Lord”[4], upon whose charism and spirituality our life is based. We give thanks to God for the great gift that Augustine represents for the Church, for our Family and for all humanity.

We also remember our tradition and our history, the spiritual inheritance we have received and which has enriched us during so many centuries, living at the service of the sons and daughters of God. This is an inheritance that has, by the grace of God, gifted us with examples of holiness, such as St. Nicholas of Tolentine, an example of humble and fraternal religious life, as well as a model of harmoniously living out the mutual dimensions of contemplation and action – a very Augustinian expression of Christian life. St. Nicholas was also highly dedicated to preaching the Word of God and to generously serving God’s people – something he was able to do out of the treasure he discovered in his deep interior life. Finally, we remember, as another integral part of our spirituality, the deep ecclesial sense of our life of evangelical poverty and apostolic fraternity, which was brought about as the Holy See united numerous groups during the thirteenth century.[5]

We must not forget the challenges of our world today, as well as the joys and sufferings of humanity.[6] The problems of our times include a world that is in crisis because of a lack of bread (marginalization and unjust poverty) or because of the exaggerations of those who seek to live by bread alone (materialism and consumerism)[7]. Our world is threatened by violence and confrontations, and finds itself in need of an ethic that is truly human, and that is founded upon justice and peace as the means by which we can resolve the conflicts that we are faced with today.[8] The Church at times appears to be socially out of touch, perhaps in danger of turning back on itself. At the same time it is seriously committed to bringing about renewal and a new evangelization. Religious life is being called to deepen its relationship with other Christian vocations and to grow in an authentic “creative faithfulness”[9] able to respond to the signs of the times.

Obviously, by ‘remembering’ we do not meant simply to fix our gaze on our past. Remembering makes sense when it helps us shed light on the present and encourages us to move forward on our path into the future, as we struggle to rediscover the best in ourselves and as we place all that we are in God’s hands, with confidence and decisiveness, in order to make of our times, better times. St. Augustine comments on this in a sermon in which he speaks about the value of prayer and of placing our trust in Christ who is physician and savior. “We say that these are difficult times. We must think that the times are like we are, and we must conclude that, if we commit ourselves to being better, we will be able to make better times and a better world together…”[10]

Remembering who we are and what we have received gives us cause for celebration. To CELEBRATE is to give thanks to God for our life, and joyfully to share with one another our experiences and our hopes, and to strengthen and support each other in our identity as we renew our fraternal communion and our common expressions of service.

As Christians, we celebrate our faith and our life. We do so with joy, which we experience as we are aware of the love and mercy of God. We do so with humility, as we recognize our weaknesses and our failings, past and present, and above all as we renew our efforts to avoid falling into the very real temptations of our life: individualism, senseless routine and the lack of solidarity. We celebrate with fraternity, recognizing that we are members of a community in which all of us have received a vocation to live united in holiness. We celebrate with faith, as we allow ourselves to be challenged by the Spirit who is still active in our life and in history. (cf. Phil. 2:3–4).

The Eucharist is, par excellence, the Christian feast, the source and culmination that expresses all that it means to celebrate in community.[11] In the Eucharist, we have the elements of memorial, pardon and reconciliation, listening to God’s Word, thanksgiving, the expression of communion and fraternal commitment. All of these elements must also be present as we celebrate our Augustinian Jubilee.

In effect, the sense of Christian celebration and its relationship to life itself were, as we know, extraordinarily important for St. Augustine, who continually invited his listeners to celebrate the mysteries by making them reality in their lives, considering that the best celebration is to live as Jesus and the saints lived, just as we recall when we celebrate their feasts.[12] For the bishop of Hippo, celebrations were always inseparably united to life, to conversion and to concrete steps which would be taken to give expression to what is professed in words.

In this spirit, we want to invite Augustinian communities throughout the world to be creative in developing ways of announcing and celebrating the Augustinian Jubilee, according to the cultural reality and available resources in any given place. We welcome and encourage any initiative that will be organized in the different countries and within the many dimensions of our life: community reflections; liturgical celebrations; academic or scholarly activities; artistic expressions; pastoral planning, etc. All of these, and more, can be avenues that might be explored for celebrating the different themes that make up a part of the Augustinian Jubilee.

For our part, we will be announcing at different times some common initiatives that are still being planned (publications, calendars, symposia, a possible trip to North Africa, etc.). Above all, we would like to underline two important aspects of the celebration of the Augustinian Jubilee:

1. Any celebration should be organized, as far as it is possible, with the joint participation of Augustinian communities of friars and sisters, secular fraternities, parishes and schools, houses of formation, etc.

2. The celebration of the Jubilee should not be limited to mere celebrations. Rather, we are proposing that in any activity, there be some gesture or aspect that gives meaningful expression to our commitment to serving the poor. In this sense, we are suggesting that the African continent – home of St. Augustine, currently experiencing oppressive conditions of poverty and disease – be the focus of some common action taken on by the Augustinian Families.

“I believe and that is why I speak, oh Lord”[13] – words of St. Augustine found near the beginning of the Confessions. We have written this letter because we believe. We believe in God, the Lord of history. We believe in the dignity of all humanity, in the possibility of creating a better world, in the presence and action of the Holy Spirit, and in our charism that can offer the Church and the world a meaningful alternative as we look for ways of responding to the problems of our time.

In order to live our faith in a way that is dynamic, and to renew the way in which we live our Augustinian charism, we are proposing that the celebration of the Jubilee be centered on a series of topics, which we hope will be further developed by you:

As we remember, celebrate and believe, it is our hope that the celebration of the AUGUSTINIAN JUBILEE 2004 – 2006 will inspire in all of us authentic conversion, and that we will be strengthened in our journey as Church, pilgrim “amidst the persecutions of this world and the consolation of God”[14] in the style of St. Augustine. This is what we ask of the Lord, and we invite all of you to join us daily in praying with the Prayer of the Augustinian Jubilee:

Rome, November 13, 2003

[1] Cf. John Paul II, Tertio Millennio Adveniente, Rome, 1994, nn. 11 ss.
[2] Cf. St. Augustine, Confessions I, 6, 7; II, 1, 1; passim.
[3] John Paul II, Augustinum Hipponensem, Rome, 1986.
[4] St. Possidius, Life of Augustine, 18.
[5] Cf. Jordan of Saxony, Life of the brothers, 1, 19.
[6] Cf. Vatican II, “Gaudium et spes”, the Church in the World Today, n. 1.
[7] Cf. St. Augustine, Com. Ps. 33, 2,15.
[8] Cf. United Nations, Millennium Declaration: development goals. New York, 2000.
[9] John Paul II, Consecrated Life and its mission in the Church and the world, Rome 1996, nn. 31, 37.
[10] St. Augustine, Sermon 80, 8.
[11] Cf. Vatican II, Sacrosanctum concilium, 10; cf. 1 Cor 11.
[12] Cf. for example, Serm. 229 C, 271, 325, etc.
[13] St. Augustine, Confessions, I, 5,5.
[14] Ibid., City of God 18, 52, 2.