In the annals of history, there are many spiritual masters who can guide us in the Christian life, and we need the guidance! After all, being a Christian is not easy! We must remember, however, that there have been countless travelers before us, some who have followed similar paths, and others who have followed vastly different paths, but all with experiences that can benefit our spiritual growth.

We are not on this journey alone.

Keeping this in mind, I have decided to start a new series called called “Companions On the Journey.” Praise God, we have many saints to look to for guidance in the Christian life, so from time to time, I will pick a new saint to read and follow as I seek to grow in Christ in my own life. From these readings, I hope to develop reflections for posting here on the blog. It may work, or it may not, but let’s try it out and see how we do. Expect these particular posts to come out once or twice a week. They may deal solely with the text, make connections with other authors I have recently read, or even external happenings around here and back home. The nice thing about the nature of this sort of project is that I can work on it at my own pace and then post-date the entries for later publishing, which should make things a bit easier.

Which brings me to Saint Augustine, our first companion in the journey. As a convert myself, I have always felt a deep connection to his writing, especially his Confessions, so this is where we will start. I will personally be going through the entire Confessions, but I may choose to omit certain reflections from the blog for various and sundry reasons. For these reflections, I will be utilizing R. S. Pine-Coffins’s translation of the Confessions, available in the Penguin Classics series (ISBN 978-0-14-044114-7). If you would like to pick up a copy yourself, I suggest calling Easter’s Books and Gifts (full disclosure: one of their former employees is my Godmother). As far as how long it will take to get through Augustine’s Confessions I am not sure, but I figure we will be journeying with him for a while. Even though I will be reading the entire book, that doesn’t mean that everything in the book will be reflected upon on the blog (we would be here for a very long time). To that end, I will note at the end of each reflection which chapter(s) the next post will focus upon.

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment, get in touch via Facebook, or fill out the contact form in the “About” section. The first post based on St. Augustine’s Confessions will go live on Saturday morning, beginning with Book I, Chapter 1.

Until then, pax.

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This is part of a continuing series, Companions on the Journey, which travels along with a particular companion in the spiritual life, one of the great saints, in order discover how some of their writings might be applicable to our everyday lives. Currently, we are traveling with Augustine of Hippo through his work, Confessions. You can take a look at previous posts in the series or read the introduction.