" Donne-moi de quoi faire offrande " : L'admirable échange du don dans les Confessions de saint Augustin

Saint Augustine's Confessions... Hasn't everything already been said about this absolute masterwork? And yet, it is still possible, even necessary, to "seize and read" this book, following Augustine's experience, one fine day of 386 that was to change his life. How can one illuminate the beauty of this unique confession, "so ancient and so new", this story of conversion, deeply rooted in the Scriptures, under the gaze of a triune God, "more interior than the most intimate in oneself"? The proposal of this book is straightforward: read the Confessions under the guidance of a seminal prayer- "Give me what I will offer you"- which constitutes the maxim of an anthropo-theology based on gift. Created by and for a gift: such is the augustinian man, aware that everything can be offered because everything is given- existence, the world, the sacramental mediation of Scripture and the Eucharist. Far from the paradoxical contemporary resentment towards the given, understood as a limitation of individual free-will, it

is, on the contrary, the offer of an "admirable exchange", woven with largesse and gratitude, that opens a path towards uita beata. [Publisher's text]

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