It has been over two weeks since Pope Leo XIV emerged on the balcony overlooking St. Peter’s Square. Like so many others, I have been reading his homilies and public addresses with great attention, but a phrase from that first day keeps echoing in my ears. In the middle of his first address at St. Peter’s, Leo directly quoted a single line from St. Augustine—a line he quoted again this weekend: “With you I am a Christian, and for you I am a bishop.” It is estimated that nearly five million words written by Augustine have survived to the present, but these words I recognized immediately.
Like Pope Leo, I, too, am “a son of St. Augustine.” As a member of the Order of Preachers, I also follow the Rule of St. Augustine. Additionally, in my research on St. Augustine, I examine how the theology of this fifth-century bishop remains relevant for the church today. When Leo quoted Augustine, it rang out to me as clear as the bells that had announced his election an hour earlier.
Why is this quote significant? Because it contains within it an important theological point about the nature of the episcopacy. The quotation signals Leo XIV’s approach to his role as bishop of Rome.
Augustine, who served as the bishop of Hippo Regius (in present-day Algeria) from roughly 395 until his death in 430, used this thought repeatedly in his preaching in order to articulate how the bishop lives within a twofold tension. The bishop’s primary and fundamental identity is found in his baptism, which is common to all Christians; in this way, he remains always with his fellow Christians. Augustine also notes, however, that a bishop is endowed with authority as a leader; in this role, he is to be a servant for his fellow Christians. The bishop is simultaneously both with his people and for his people.
This Augustinian insight remains important in the modern theological reflection upon the nature of the church. “Lumen Gentium,” the “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church” promulgated at the Second Vatican Council, uses the line to articulate the similarities and the distinctions between the laity and the church’s ordained ministers:
[The laity] have for their brothers those in the sacred ministry who by teaching, by sanctifying and by ruling with the authority of Christ feed the family of God so that the new commandment of charity may be fulfilled by all. St. Augustine puts this very beautifully when he says: “What I am for you terrifies me; what I am with you consoles me. For you I am a bishop; but with you I am a Christian. The former is a duty; the latter a grace. The former is a danger; the latter, salvation.”
“Lumen Gentium” uses this to affirm how the bishops serve the church through teaching, sacramental ministry and governance (No. 32). The bishop exists for the sake of these ministries, which are both a “duty” and a great “danger” because he will ultimately be responsible to Christ for the way in which he fulfills (or fails to fulfill) these duties. And yet “Lumen Gentium” also uses Augustine to articulate that the bishop, as a Christian, receives grace and salvation from Jesus Christ along with his brothers and sisters among the laity.
Pope Leo XIV, who served as the prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops, would surely have been familiar with this important passage.
Augustine articulated the same point in several places in his sermons, using different imagery. Each of these images helps to flesh out what Augustine means by the passage that Leo quotes. In one improvisation on the theme, Augustine stresses that the bishop holds authority as a shepherd (in Latin, pastor) but also remains one of the sheep within the Christian flock. Once, when preaching at a local synod of bishops, Augustine told the laity gathered there: “It is because we [bishops] have been put in charge that we are counted among the shepherds, if we are good. But because we are Christians, we too are sheep along with you.”
Augustine recognizes that a bishop has a divinely ordained role of authority for leading the church as a shepherd. Yet at the same time, Augustine realizes that he also remains a member within the Christian flock. The bishop guides the people but is himself guided by Christ the good shepherd. For the people he is a pastor, with the people he is one of the sheep.
This imagery is akin to Pope Francis’ exhortation to all priests: “Be shepherds, with the ‘odor of the sheep,’ make it real, as shepherds among your flock.” In an Augustinian theology of the episcopacy, the bishop must boldly exercise his authority as a shepherd but also recognize that his personal salvation comes from being a member of the flock. All these threads are tied together in Leo XIV, who is a son of St. Augustine, a priest of the generation following Vatican II and someone ordained a bishop in Pope Francis’ pontificate.
When describing the role of a bishop, St. Augustine also uses the image of a teacher and a student. The bishop, especially when preaching in the liturgy, undoubtedly serves as teacher. Yet, several times Augustine also described himself and his audience with the Latin term condiscipuli, meaning “fellow students,” or, more literally, “co-students.” As a bishop, Augustine is a teacher for his people, but as a Christian, he is a fellow student with his people. In one sermon, Augustine preaches the following:
So with the Lord’s assistance I will serve you with what he gives me, always bearing in mind the service required of me by my office [as bishop]. This requires us to speak, not as teachers, but as ministers; not to students, but to fellow students (condiscipuli).... In fact, we all have just one teacher [Christ], whose school is on earth, and whose magisterial chair is in heaven.
When he said these words, Augustine was preaching from a position of authority, raised above his people on a platform in the sanctuary in the Basilica of Peace in the city of Hippo. The bishop serves as an authoritative teacher of the Gospel for his congregation. Yet Augustine also had the humility to recognize that he remained, with his congregation, a student of the one true teacher, Christ.
These dynamics of laity/bishop, sheep/shepherd and student/teacher are packed in behind the words quoted by Leo, “With you I am a Christian, and for you I am a bishop.” A bishop occupies an in-between place with the church. He straddles the divide between the authority of God and the dependency that all people have upon the grace of God. To me, Leo’s use of Augustine’s words indicates a desire to persevere in that key Augustinian virtue of humility.
For Augustine, pride is a great danger to the spiritual life, and those entrusted with a high office are especially vulnerable to this vice. For this reason, he urged in one letter that “humility precede and accompany and follow upon all our good actions.” The virtue of humility should seep into the core of each Christian, even while one holds an exalted office, such as bishop. After all, Christ, who is God the most high, humbled himself by taking human nature and dying on the cross. While his divine nature remains, Christ’s humility reveals itself in his willingness to share in our human nature together with us.
Augustine constantly preached humility, and so has Leo. He gestured toward it on that first day, and he has returned to it in his subsequent statements. On May 9, he preached that “an indispensable commitment for all those in the church who exercise a ministry of authority…is to move aside so that Christ may remain, to make oneself small so that he may be known and glorified.” Leo points his cardinals toward the path of smallness, which in the face of great responsibility is the path toward humility.
He again stressed the disposition of the humble bishop when, in his homily on May 18, he noted that St. Peter—and implicitly his successors—“must shepherd the flock without ever yielding to the temptation to be an autocrat, lording it over those entrusted to him” and should “walk alongside” their brothers and sisters.
Another link comes from Leo’s stress on the unity within the church. The bishop, as a leader for his people, gathers his people together. But the bishop with his people are all gathered together around Christ. The motto on Leo’s coat of arms gives another quote from Augustine: In illo uno unum (“In the One, we are one”). The “One” is Christ, who is the cause of unity among all Christians, the bishop with his fellow disciples.
First words are significant, and it is significant that Leo chose to quote Augustine: “With you I am a Christian, and for you I am a bishop.” A deep reading of Augustine’s meaning gives a glimpse into Leo’s approach to his new ministry as the bishop of Rome. As pontiff, he serves a purpose: He exists for others who seek a bridge by which God can come close. Yet, in the end, the bishop’s own salvation comes from being a Christian; he humbly stands with his brothers and sisters as God comes to meet us. The episcopacy is a duty, but glory comes from being a Christian. May the pontificate of Leo XIV be infused with the same love and humility as displayed by his father, St. Augustine.
