Easter Eve at the Baptistery

On the night before Easter, 387 AD, a thirty-two-year-old rhetoric professor stepped into the octagonal baptistery beside Milan Cathedral. His name was Augustine, and he had spent half his lifetime running. He had chased wisdom through Manichaean philosophy. He had pursued pleasure in a long series of affairs. He had grasped for status in the imperial courts of Rome. His mother, Monica, had wept and prayed for him for seventeen years, until a bishop assured her, "The son of so many tears shall not perish."…