Mission Statement

In response to the call of Jesus Christ and His Church, the Augustine Institute is a Catholic Institute of Higher Education that forms disciples for leadership in the New Evangelization through intellectual, personal, and practical instruction so that they may renew the Church and transform the world for Christ.

The New Evangelization and John Paul II

The Augustine Institute exists to equip people to play their part in what John Paul II called “the new evangelization” that responds to a new situation in which formerly Christian cultures have lost their Christian roots.  People who may even call themselves Christians have “accepted a secular model of thinking and living” and “live a life far removed from Christ and his Gospel.”  In fact, “entire groups of the baptized have lost a living sense of the faith.”  To respond to this modern crisis, John Paul II called for an evangelization that is “new in ardor, methods and expression.”   The Augustine Institute's unique curriculum meets the unique needs of our time by blending study of Scripture and theology with analysis of the current culture and the practical skills necessary to help students to present the timeless Gospel of Jesus Christ in a timely way to people.

Saint Augustine - Our Patron Saint

Although a figure at a remove of 1650 years from our own day, the founders of the Institute recognized immediately that the task they had undertaken must be entrusted to the patronage of this great Father, Saint, and Doctor of the Church.

Augustine of Hippo accepted the mantel of ecclesiastical office at a moment in history between two ages and between two cultures. The classical age, of which he was a superlative product, was coming to a close, while the West's Christian future was, as yet, by no means assured. In fact, he died in the midst of a siege of his beloved city by armies of the Vandal King Genseric in August of 430.

Even his parentage suggests the same tension between a dying world and a world yet to be born. Patricius, his father, was a Roman curiale, or government official, in Tagaste, North Africa and a pagan, while his mother, Monica, was a Christian of profound virtue. His upbringing and education was likewise divided, given a Christian cast early on by his mother, who had him enrolled among the catechumens, and later ordered to worldly success by the designs of his father.

During his 76 years he faced monumental moral and intellectual struggles before arriving at Christian convictions. While still a young student far from home he fathered a son out of wedlock. His heart was for years lost to the faith so dear to his mother under the influence of an eastern religion, while his intellect was given over to pagan philosophy. During this period he belittled the Scriptures, seeing them as primitive and base, giving his pious mother abundant reasons for the tears she shed for his soul - a very modern sounding story indeed.

After having come to Christ and His Church, Augustine the bishop and teacher faced theological assaults of such variety - questioning the sovereignty of God; the nature of the Church, her hierarchy and sacraments; our need for grace; and even the divinity of Christ - that he was able to forge the framework for the future of western theological reflection between the anvil of heresy and the hammer of his faith.

All in all a man who experienced times not all that unlike our own, Augustine is an apt figure for us to look to today. Trained as a rhetor, accomplished as a philosopher, unsurpassed as a theologian, but a man who put the life of the mind entirely at the service of the Christian community, we hope to find in him a model for our endeavors as students, teachers, and scholars, and no less as sons, daughters, and servants of the Church he so dearly loved and defended.

St. Augustine, pray for us!

The Augustine Institute Seal

The Augustine Institute seal is marked by the cross of Christ at its center, which delineates four quadrants, two of blue and two of gold. The blue honors Our Lady and is an appeal for her intercession for the Institute and the Archdiocese of Denver where it is located. It surrounds the “A” for Augustine Institute in the upper left quandrant and the mountain in the lower right, which symbolizes the front range of the Rocky Mountains, below which stands the City of Denver, Colorado.

The gold both honors God and is an appeal for the Divine beneficence. It surrounds the Holy Scripture in the upper right quadrant, which discloses the Father perfectly in the Son. The Latin inscription across the holy pages reads tolle lege (“take and read”), the words the young Augustine heard which directed him to Romans 13:13-14, convincing him to finally “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” The inscription tolle lege reads the same when read from either left to right or top to bottom, which is meant to indicate the perfectly ordered disclosure of truth of the inspired and inerrant word of Scripture.

The lower left quadrant bears the Augustinian heart pierced and enflamed by the love imparted by the gift of the Holy Spirit. The motto of the Institute on the banner across the bottom translates as “You have made us for yourself” and is the first and lesser known part of the famous phrase from the Confessions , Book I, Chapter I: quia fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te (“For You have made us for Yourself and our heart is restless until it rests in You”).