Of all the autobiographies ever written by mere mortals,Confessionsby Saint Augustine of Hippo is the greatest. In this masterpiece, you will find a doctor of the Church longing for the true Doctor of the soul, Christ. Taking us from Augustines roots in Africa to his encounters with his spiritual father Saint Ambrose in Milan, from his battle against his concupiscence to his famed conversion,Confessionsis itself a veritable pilgrimage to the threshold of the new Jerusalem. Indeed, its end is not biography but a breathtaking meditation on time and memory, on the human soul and the material world, and on the creative and redemptive power of God himself.

In Dr. Anthony Esolens new translation, the esteemed translator and author seeks to retain and reveal the figurativeby hewing as closely as possible to the literal, both in the significance of individual words and in the manner of the authors expression.Confessionsis a work of literary art,one of the most stupendous ever wrought,Esolen says, immensely rich in insights and intricate in its returning, again and again, to the questions of a soul in search of truth. The Lord is ready to answer if we will only seek, and ask, and knock.

Confessionsis like no other book you will ever read. According to Dr. Esolen, TheConfessionsis one continued and coherent prayer, a profound profession of faith, and a plea for more, ever more wisdom, ever more love. It is artistic in its whole conception, in its parts and their arrangement down to the merest sentence. It is closer to the Gothic cathedrals that would grace Europe eight hundred years later than to anything that you or I might write about ourselves and our lives.

InConfessions, the reader does more than encounter Augustine, the boy, the promising youth, the sinner, the teacher, the intellectual wanderer, the hesitant catechumen, and the Christian man set free at last. Through this book, we enter into our own spiritual journeys, as we cry out to the living God in the depths of our hearts, Let me know you, O Lord, who know me; let me know you even as I am known.

Hardcover.