Now I Hunger And Thirst For More

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.

From the Confessions of Saint Augustine, bishop 

Oh St. Augustine, Doctor of Grace, pray for us sinners, that we may be like you in our yearning for God.

Their Reply, Their Beauty

I put my question to the earth, and it replied, “I am not he”;

I questioned everything it held, and they confessed the same.

I questioned the sea and the great deep,

and the teeming live creatures that crawl,

and they replied,

“We are not God; seek higher.”

I questioned the gusty winds,

and every breeze with all its flying creatures told me,

“Anaximenes was wrong: I am not God.”

To the sky I put my question, to sun, moon, stars,

But they denied me: “We are not the God you seek.”

And to all things which stood around the portals of my flesh

I said,

“Tell me of my God.

You are not he, but tell me something of him.”

Then they lifted their mighty voices and cried,

“He made us.”

My questioning was my attentive spirit,

And their reply, their beauty.

-St. Augustine of Hippo

On This Feast of St. Augustine, We Pray

Prayer of John Paul II to Saint Augustine

O great Augustine, our father and teacher, who knows the shining paths of God and also the crooked paths of men, we admire the marvels that divine Grace
 has worked in you, making you a passionate witness 
to truth and goodness 
at the service of your neighbor.

At the start of a new millennium marked by the Cross of Christ, teach us to read history
 in the light of divine Providence, which guides events to the final encounter with the Father. Guide us towards goals of peace, kindling in our hearts your own desire for the values upon which we, 
with the strength that comes from God, can build the "city of Man".

May the profound teaching that you drew, with loving and patient study, from the ever-living sources of Scripture
 enlighten all who are tempted today
 by alienating mirages.

May you obtain for them the courage to set out on the way towards that "inner man" in whom the One, who alone can restore peace
 to our restless hearts, awaits.

So many of our contemporaries seem to have 
lost the hope of reaching,
 amidst the many conflicting ideologies, the truth that they continue to yearn for 
in depths of their hearts.

Teach them never to give up their quest 
in the certainty that, in the end, their efforts will be rewarded 
by the fulfilling encounter with that supreme Truth, who is the Source 
of every created truth.

Lastly, O St. Augustine, 
communicate to us too a spark of that burning love for the Church, the Catholic mother of the Saints,
which sustained and gave life 
to the efforts of your own long ministry.

Enable us, as we walk together under the guidance of our legitimate Pastors, to reach the glory of the heavenly Homeland
 where, with all the Blesseds, we can join in singing the new and eternal Alleluia.

Amen.

Prayer written by Blessed John Paul II for the 1,650^th Anniversary of the Birth of St. Augustine

Holy Trinity Sunday - so much to celebrate!

Some years it’s difficult to transition from Easter to ordinary time. Our hearts get so used to celebrating, that it’s hard for them to slow down the pace and find excitement in normalcy. It’s nice, then, that the Church gives us some feast days after Pentecost, so we can ease our way back into ordinary liturgies with ordinary vestments and ordinary altar flowers.

We are blessed to celebrate one of those feast days today—Holy Trinity Sunday. Blessed John Paul II explained its significance during his Angelus for the solemnity in 2003:

This Sunday which follows Pentecost we celebrate the Solemnity of the Blessed Trinity. The Triune nature of God is the principal mystery of the Catholic faith. With it, we come to the end of the journey of revelation which Jesus fulfilled through his Incarnation, Passion, Death and Resurrection. From the summit of the "holy mountain" which is Christ, we contemplate the first and last horizon of the universe and of history: the Love of God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

God is not solitude, but perfect communion. From God being communion derives the vocation of all humanity to form the one great family in which the various races and cultures meet one another and are reciprocally enriched (cf. Acts 17: 26).

Today we celebrate this “perfect communion,” this union of the Trinity which is ceaselessly praised in our liturgy and in our prayers. When we make the sign of the Cross, when we repeat the Glory Be, and when we profess the Apostles’ Creed—we glorify the Trinity, the central mystery of the Catholic faith. As Blessed John Paul II once exclaimed: