| The Confessions of St. Augustine - SELECTED PASSAGES - “You have made us for yourself [, O Lord], and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” (I, i) “The Bible was composed in such a way that as beginners mature, its meaning grows with them.” (I, v) “I was surprised that any other mortals were alive, since he [my friend] whom I had loved as if he would never die was dead. I was even more surprised that when he was dead I was still alive, for he was my ‘other self’. Someone has well said of his friend, ‘He was half my soul’. I had felt that my soul and his were ‘one soul in two bodies’.” (IV, vi) “That ‘man of God’ [St. Ambrose] received me like a father and expressed pleasure at my coming with a kindness most fitting in a bishop. I began to like him, at first indeed not as a teacher of the truth, for I had absolutely no confidence in your Church, but as a human being who was kind to me.” (V, xiii) “At the that time you tortured me with toothache, and when it became so bad that I lost the power to speak, it came into my heart to beg all my friends present to pray for me to you, God of health of both soul and body. I wrote this on a wax tablet and gave it to them to read. As soon as we fell on our knees in the spirit of supplication, the pain vanished. But what agony it was, and how instantly it disappeared! I admit I was terrified, ‘my Lord my God’. I had experienced nothing like it in my life.” (IX, iv) “How I wept during your hymns and songs! I was deeply moved by the music of the sweet chants of your Church. The sounds flowed into my ears and the truth was distilled into my heart. This caused the feelings of devotion to overflow. Tears ran, and it was good for me to have that experience.” (IX, vi) “I have met with many people who wished to deceive, none who wished to be deceived.” (X, xxiii) “You reply clearly, but not all hear you clearly. All ask your counsel on what they desire, but do not always hear what they would wish. Your best servant is the person who does not attend so much to hearing what he himself wants as to willing what he has heard from you.” (X, xxvi) “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.” (X, xxvii) “My God, give me yourself, restore yourself to me. See, I love you, and if it is too little, let me love you more strongly. I can conceive no measure by which to know how far my love falls short of that which is enough to make my life run to your embraces, and not to turn away until it lies hidden ‘in the secret place of your presence’. This alone I know: without you it is evil for me, not only in external things but within my being, and all my abundance which is other than my God is mere poverty.” (XIII, viii) |
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