Forgive the title for this post, but St Augustine's story is of a remarkable change of heart and all the consequences which flow from that. The young Augustine was brilliant but brittle: he was clever, but he was also ambitious and selfish. Even his conversion to Christianity was not without its problematic side. History, however, has forgiven him his abandonment of his mistress and their son, forgiven but not forgotten, for the effect of these events in his private life and what we once thought of as the decay of the Roman Empire (revisionist historians now stress continuity rather than change) on the development of Augustine's theology is incalculable.

From Augustine come the concepts of original sin and the just war; the first fully-articulated realisation of the need of grace for true freedom; the idea of the Church as a spiritual City of God; the monastic rules and the example of monastic living in north Africa, and much more. In the Confessions, he gave us a new literary genre: the spiritual autobiography which goes beyond what we commonly expect of such a work to give us a theory of time which still commands respect today. Above all, Augustine engaged intellectually with the questions behind the "plain sense of scripture". His view of human nature was far less pessimistic than is often suggested; and in the expositions of the psalms or the sermons, for example, which were jotted down by a listener as he spoke, we hear the warmth and humanity of Augustine the pastor.

Augustine was a great man, all the greater for not seeking greatness, one of Africa's best gifts to the Church. May he pray for us all.