Fire on the Altar: Setting Our Souls Ablaze Through Augustine’s Confessions

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In Fire on the Altar, renowned Augustinian theologian C. C. Pecknold provides readers with a genuinely Catholic understanding of Augustine’s Confessions. Setting out to free readers from liberal and individualistic distortions of Augustine’s anthropology, Pecknold argues that a religious and liturgical understanding of Augustine’s famous work unlocks a more Catholic approach. Strikingly, Fire on the Altar demonstrates that Augustine’s anthropology is essentially built around the concept of an “altar” at the centre of the soul and culminates in the Eucharist setting fire to our hearts and minds. Examining Augustine’s orientation to the altar, Pecknold explores:Our duty to worship GodThe “religious” nature of our sinsWhat we offer to God through our heartsThe kind of worship that the mind can makeThe vicarious sacrifices that we can make for the love of neighbourThe intercession of saintsThe importance of friends and a social understanding of the personThe place of bishopsThe sacramentsThe Blessed Virgin MaryThe nature of conversionAnd the mission of the Catholic ChurchDr Pecknold’s unique companion to a classic of Western civilisation shows that the entire Confessions coheres around the Sacrifice of the Mass, revealing that it is only by union with the fire of divine charity on the Church’s high altar that we can make a sacrifice acceptable to God.

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