The Voice in the Garden at Milan

In the summer of 386 AD, a thirty-one-year-old rhetoric professor sat weeping beneath a fig tree in a Milan garden. Augustine of Hippo had spent years running — from his mother Monica's prayers, from the faith of his childhood, from the God he knew was real but refused to face. He had buried himself in ambition, pleasure, and philosophy, layering excuse upon excuse like fig leaves stitched together against the cold truth of his own condition.…