“With Your Word You pierced my heart, and I loved You.”
–Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 183. (10.6.8)
“Lord, I am Your servant, born of Your own handmaid. You have broken the chains that bound me; I will sacrifice in Your honour.
Let me praise You in my heart, let me praise You with my tongue. Let this be the cry of my whole being: Lord, there is none like You.
Let them say this and, in answer, I beg You to whisper in my heart, ‘I am here to save you.’
Who am I? What kind of man am I? What evil have I not done? Or if there is evil that I have not done, what evil is there that I have not spoken? If there is any that I have not spoken, what evil is there that I have not willed to do?
But You, O Lord, are good. You are merciful.
You saw how deep I was sunk in death, and it was Your power that drained dry the well of corruption in the depths of my heart.
And all that You asked of me was to deny my own will and accept yours. But, during all those years, where was my free will?
What was the hidden, secret place from which it was summoned in a moment, so that I might bend my neck to Your easy yoke and take Your light burden on my shoulders, Christ Jesus, my Helper and my Redeemer?
How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose and was now glad to reject! You drove them from me, You who are the true, the sovereign joy.
You drove them from me and took their place, You who are sweeter than all pleasure, though not to flesh and blood, You who outshine all light yet are hidden deeper than any secret in our hearts, You who surpass all honour though not in the eyes of men who see all honour in themselves.
At last my mind was free from the gnawing anxieties of ambition and gain, from wallowing in filth and scratching the itching sore of lust.
I began to talk to You freely, O Lord my God, my Light, my Wealth, and my Salvation.”
–Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin (New York: Penguin, 1961), 181. (9.1.1.)
“Your omnipotence is never far from us, even when we are far from You.”
–Augustine of Hippo, Confessions (trans. Henry Chadwick; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 400/1992), 25. (II.ii.3)
“Inasmuch as He was a man, He was a mediator, but inasmuch as He is the Word, He is not in the middle, because He is equal to God, and is God in the presence of God, and one God together with Him.
How you loved us, good Father, who did not spare your only Son, but handed Him over for the sake of us, the wicked!
How you loved us, for whose sake Your Son, through not considering it an act of robbery to be Your equal, was subjugated and reduced clear to death on the cross!
But He was the only one among the dead with free will, having both the power to lay down His life and the power to take it up again.
For our sake, He was both Your victor and Your sacrificial victim, and the victor because He was the victim.
For our sake He was both Your sacrificing priest and Your sacrifice, and He was the priest because He was the sacrifice. He was born from You yet acted as our slave, thereby turning us from Your slaves into Your sons.”
–Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, trans. Sarah Ruden (New York: Modern Library, 2017), 341-342.
“In Yourself You arouse us, giving us delight in glorifying You, because You made us with Yourself as our goal, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.”
–Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, trans. Sarah Ruden (New York: Modern Library, 2017), 3.
“What is it that I love?
I asked the earth, and it said, ‘It’s not me,’ and everything in it admitted the same thing.
I asked the sea and the great chasms of the deep, and the creeping things that have the breath of life in them, and they answered, ‘We aren’t your God: search above us.’
I asked the gusty winds, and all the atmosphere there is, along with its inhabitants, said, ‘I’m not God.’
I asked the sky, the sun, the moon, the stars, and they said, “We’re not the God you’re looking for, either.”
I told all those beings who stand around outside my body’s gates, its senses, ‘Tell me about my God. You aren’t Him, but tell me something about Him.’ And they declared with a shout, ‘He made us!’
My question was the act of focusing on them, and their response was their beauty.
But then I turned myself toward myself and asked myself, ‘Who are you?’ and I answered, ‘A human being.’ Here at my service were my body and my soul, the one of which is outward, the other inward.
Which was the one I should use to seek my God– whom I’d already sought through material objects from the earth clear up to the sky, as far as I could send the message-bearing rays of my eyesight?
The soul within is certainly better for informing me, as all the messengers that are material objects relay to it their news, and it presides and judges the depositions of the sky and the earth and everything in them that says ‘We are not God,’ and ‘God made us.’
The inside person has found this out through the help of the outside person; my inside self found this out– I did, it was me, my mind working through my physical perception.
I asked the whole huge universe about my God, and it answered me, ‘I am not God, but God made me.'”
–Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, trans. Sarah Ruden (New York: Modern Library, 2017), 284-284.
“It isn’t with a wavering but with a sure awareness that I love You, Master. You struck my heart to the core with Your Word, and I fell in love with You.
But the sky, too, and the earth, and everything that’s in them–look, from all directions everything is telling me to love You, and never stops telling all people, so that they have no excuse.
But deeper is the mercy You will grant to whomever You grant Your mercy, and the tenderheartedness You will show anyone to whom You’re tenderhearted. Otherwise, the sky and the earth could speak Your praises, but we would be deaf.
But what do I love, in loving You? It’s not the beauty of material things, or any attractiveness of this time-bound world, not the pale gleam of the light, this light here which is so friendly to these physical eyes of mine.
And it’s not the sweet melodies of every sort, and not the agreeable aromas of flowers and perfumes and spices, and not manna or honey on the tongue, and not a body welcome in a physical embrace.
I don’t love these things in loving my God.
But I do love a certain light, and a certain voice, and a certain fragrance, and a certain food, and a certain embrace in loving my God: this is the light, the voice, the fragrance, the food, the embrace of the person I am within, where something that space does not contain radiates, and something sounds that time doesn’t snatch away, and something sheds a fragrance that the wind doesn’t scatter, and something has a flavor that gluttony doesn’t diminish, and something clings that the full indulgence of desire doesn’t sunder.
This is what I love in loving my God.”
–Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, trans. Sarah Ruden (New York: Modern Library, 2017), 281-282.
“With Your word You pierced my heart, and I loved You.”
–Augustine of Hippo, St. Augustine Confessions, Trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), X.vi.8, p. 183.
“Late have I loved You, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved You. And see, You were within and I was in the external world and sought You there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which You made. You were with me, and I was not with You.
The lovely things kept me far from You, though if they did not have their existence in You, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, You put to flight my blindness.
You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after You. I tasted You, and I feel but hunger and thirst for You. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is Yours.”
–Augustine of Hippo, St. Augustine Confessions, Trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), X.xxvii.38, p. 201.
“O Lord, let me not tire of thanking You for Your mercy in rescuing me from all my wicked ways, so that You may be sweeter to me than all the joys which used to tempt me, so that I may love You most intensely and clasp Your hand with all the power of my devotion, so that You may save me from all temptation until the end of my days.”
–Aurelius Augustine, Confessions, (1.15.24). Trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin (New York: Penguin, 1961), 35.
