By Alex Fogleman
Today marks the feast of St. Augustine of Hippo (d. 430). For such a festive occasion, I wanted to reproduce here part of his exquisite articulation of a central component of teaching—joy. Augustine wrote On Catechizing Beginners (De catechizandis rudibus) in response to a request from Deogratias, a talented priest and catechist from nearby Carthage, whose own teaching had become lackluster. He was boring even himself! Among other prescriptions, Augustine shows Deogratias how to teach with cheerfulness and joy.
“Cheerfulness” is the common English rendering of the Latin hilaritas, which in turn comes from the Greek adjective hilarós (ἱλαρός) and the noun hilarótēs (ἱλαρότης). We find it in the NT in only a few places, but these are insightful:
Rom. 12:6-8: We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness (hilarótēs).
2 Cor. 9:7: “Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful (hilarós) giver.”
The sense that dictionaries will give suggest not only a cheerful lightheartedness but also a sense of attentiveness, a readiness to give, a disposition to generosity.
BDAG describes as hilarós as “being full of cheer, cheerful, glad, happy of things” and hilarótēs as a “quality of state of cheerfulness, opp[osite] of an attitude suggesting being under duress; cheerfulness, gladness, wholeheartedness, graciousness.”
Thayer’s Greek Lexicon describes hilarós as “cheerful, joyous, prompt to do anything” while hilarótēs is “cheerfulness, readiness of mind.”
In these definitions and the scriptural references, the feeling of “cheer” is linked with an others-oriented disposition of compassion—an alertness or readiness of mind that is eager to give. Cheerfulness is not a drunken stupor but a taut attentiveness to one’s neighbor. In the 2 Cor. passage, cheerfulness is linked with financial giving. In Rom. 12, there is a direct link between cheerfulness and “compassion” (Gk, ἔλεος; Lt. misericordia).
Augustine appreciates the financial connotations but also thinks they apply that much more to the giving of spiritual wealth—i.e. teaching. Furthermore, he links it with the disposition of joy (gaudens) and mercy (misericordia). Towards the beginning of On Catechizing, he says how he will explain to Deogratias the “what” of teaching—how long and in what kind of detail to describe the biblical narrative. That’s the easy part. The more difficult aspect of teaching, says Augustine, is doing so with joy.
Our greatest concern is how to make it possible for those who catechize to do so with joy (gaudens). For the more they succeed in this, the more appealing they will be.
For if “God loves a cheerful (hilarem) giver” (2 Cor. 9:7) in matters of material wealth, how much more is this true in matters of spiritual wealth? But for such cheerfulness (hilaritas) to be present at the opportune time depends on the compassion (misericordiae) of the one teaching.
After describing in some detail how to tell the narrative of Scripture, showing forth Christ and the church as the treasure hidden in the fields, he returns again to the topic of cheerfulness.
Indeed, the most significant complaint I have heard you make is that your discourse seemed even to you to be dull and degraded (uilis abiectusque) when you instruct someone in the Christian name. Now this, I know, results not so much from a lack of thing to say on your part—for which I know you are well-trained—nor from any poverty of speech, but rather from a tedium of mind (animi taedio). And this may spring either from the cause of which I have already spoken—that our intelligence is better pleased and more thoroughly arrested by that which we perceive in silence in the mind, and that we have no inclination to have our attention called off from it to a noise of words coming far short of representing it—or from the circumstance that even when discourse is pleasant, we have more delight in hearing or reading things which have been expressed in a superior manner and which are set forth without any care or anxiety on our part, rather than us putting together, for the comprehension of others, words suddenly conceived, and leaving it an uncertain issue, on the one hand, whether such terms occur to us as adequately represent the sense, and on the other, whether they be accepted in such a manner as to profit.
Or again, it could come from the fact that these teachings have become so familiar to us that we no longer find them necessary for our own advancement. In this case, it becomes irksome to us to return again and again to those matters that are we are supposed to teach the uninstructed. Our mind, by this time being fairly grown up, moves with no pleasure in the circle of subjects so well-worn and, as it were, so childish.
Another reason for a speaker’s taedium occurs because the hearer is unmoved (immobilis)—either because he is inwardly unaffected or because he does not indicate with bodily motion that he understands or is pleased with what is said. It’s not that we are greedy for human praise. It’s that the things we minister are of God, and the more we love those we teach, the more we desire that matters of salvation become pleasing to them. If we fail in this, we are saddened. We become weakened and shattered in our course—as if we are grinding our work away in vain.
It also sometimes happens that we are drawn away from something we want to do—either an activity that we enjoyed or thought was necessary—because we are compelled by someone we do not wish to offend or by the urgency of someone we cannot get rid of to instruct someone catechetically. In these instances, we approach a task that requires great tranquility with minds perturbed. We become grieved that we cannot undertake our tasks the way we wanted and cannot fit everything in. We thus teach from a place of despondency and our speech advances without attraction. Beginning from the arid soil of dejection, the words do not flow.
Sometimes, too, sadness takes possession in our heart when some scandal occurs at the very time someone says: “Come speak to this person; he desires to become a Christian.” This is said in ignorance of the hidden disturbance that consumes us from within. But if they are not someone to whom we can share our feelings, we comply unwillingly. Then, certainly, our discourse will be languid and unenjoyable, transmitted through the agitated and fuming channel of a heart in such a condition.
Seeing there are so many causes that cloud the serenity of our minds, we must seek, in accordance with God’s will, appropriate remedies that can relieve our despondency and, with fervor of spirit, help us to rejoice and delight in the tranquility of a good work. “For God loveth a cheerful giver” (2 Cor. 9:7). (10.14; translation a mix of NPNF, Canning, and my own).
Augustine goes on to unpack each of these reasons in more detail. For the teacher who would rather learn than teach, Augustine encourages modeling oneself on Christ’s Incarnation, citing Phil. 2. He also invites them to think of themselves as the mother hen who covers her brood (Mt. 23:57). He concludes: “the more love goes down in a spirit of service to the ranks of the lowliest people, the more surely it rediscovers the quiet that is within when its good conscience testifies that it seeks nothing of those to whom it down but their eternal salvation” (10.15; Canning, 93).
For the teacher who finds himself in error in his teaching, which may scandalize his hearer, Augustine counsels him to humility, seeing this as God testing him to see if he can maintain his composure and tranquility, and not rush pridefully into the defense of his error.
For those teachers who grow tired of constantly rehearsing the same information, he invites them to imagine their relationship with their students in more familial terms—like a father or mother teaching their children. This imaginative readjustment is meant to inculcate compassion. And this in turn invites a perichoretic movement of teacher-student indwelling.
For so great is this feeling of compassion that when people are touched by us as we speak, and we by them as they learn, we each dwell in the other, and so it is as if they speak in us what they hear while we, in some way, learn in them what it is we teach (12.17; Canning, 97).
He then provides another example—like giving a beloved friend a tour of your hometown. While it is old terrain for you, you see it through their eyes, and it becomes, in a way, new. Augustine highlights that the closer the relationship, the newer and fresher our old neighborhood will seem.
Isn’t it quite common that when we show certain beautiful, spacious locales, whether in town or out in the countryside, to those who have never seen them before, we who have been in the habit of passing them by without any enjoyment find our own delight renewed by their delight at the novelty of it all? And how much more enjoyable the closer our friendship, because as we come together more and more through this bond of love (amor), what had gotten old becomes new to us all over again (12.17; Canning, 97-98).
Again, there’s much more again has to say on joy. But this bit should suffice to highlight how important the inner life is for the teacher. Augustine, ever the theologian of the heart, was constantly reminded that, no matter how skillful or technically accurate our teaching is, without joy, it will all fall apart.
In the end, though, joy is not something one drums up by one’s own willpower. Joy is a gift of the Holy Spirit shed abroad in our hearts and inducing us to love. Augustine concludes his section on cheerfulness thus:
When all these considerations and reflections have succeeded in dispelling the darkness of taedium, one’s intention becomes apt for catechizing. The words are received in a pleasant manner, breaking forth vigorously and cheerfully (hilariter) from the rich vein of charity. For these things indeed which are uttered here are spoken, not so much by me to you, as rather to us all by that very “love which is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit that is given to us” (Rom. 5:5).