You Converted Me - review

You Converted Me by Tony Jones (translation by Robert J. Edmonson) is an updated translation of The Confessions of St. Augustine with additional notes. This book was given to me by the generous people at Paraclete Press via an offer that they posted on jesuscreed.org. Without Paraclete giving me the book, I imagine the author and the recommendations on the back cover would have caused me enough concern that would have prevented me from actually buying the book. In this case, I would have been wrong because I enjoyed the book immensely.

While it is difficult to critique a classic like The Confessions, let me offer a few observations from this book. First, the translation is very easy to read. That made it quite enjoyable. Second, the notes that Jones gives are rather sparse but helpful. He provides useful breaks in the text and offers brief comments that don't distract from the original author, Augustine.

Augustine sees sin for what it really is. At times, the book can be hard to follow since he is actually talking to the Lord throughout the entire book. But there is a passion in his writing that is inspiring. I will give you a taste of The Confessions by supplying some quotes that caught my eye:

Why, then, do you still wander in these difficult and trying ways? There’s no rest where you’re trying to find it. Try to find what you are searching for, but it isn’t where you’re searching for it. You’re trying to find a blessed life in the land of death; it isn’t here. How could there be a blessed life where there is no life? (p 91)

Arise, Lord, and act! Stir us up, and recall us; kindle and draw us; stir us to passionate feeling, grow sweet to us; let us love you, let us run after you. (p 206)

… you set me face to face with myself and thrust me before my eyes, so that I might discover my gross immorality and hate it. I knew it, but acted as though I didn’t see it – I winked and forgot it. (p 215)

And the famous:
Give me chastity and abstinence from sexual activity, but not yet. (p 216)