The podcast for this sermon can be found here.
In the garden of Eden, the piece of fruit that Adam and Eve took that bite from is never identified as an apple. Although never named, that apple has perhaps become the most infamous piece of fruit known to humankind. Today, I would suggest to you that the second most infamous piece of fruit is a pear, because it was a pear that St. Augustine stole when he was sixteen years old. Why did he steal a pear and what is his significance?
He wrote in his work Confessions, “Yet I was willing to steal, and steal I did [… the pear …] although I was not compelled by any lack, unless it were the lack of a sense of justice or a distaste for what was right and a greedy love of doing wrong. For of what I stole I already had plenty, and much better at that, and I had no wish to enjoy the things I coveted by stealing, but only to enjoy the theft itself and the sin.” Continue reading “Sermon: St. Augustine”