Who will grant me to find peace in you? Who will grant me this grace, that you would come into my heart
and inebriate it, enabling me to forget the evils that beset me and embrace
you, my only good? What are you to me? Have mercy on me, so that I may tell.
What indeed am I to you, that you should command me to love you, and grow angry
with me if I do not, and threaten me with enormous woes? Is not the failure to
love woe enough in itself? Alas for me! Through your own merciful dealings with
me, O Lord my God, tell me what you are to me. Say to my soul, I am your salvation. Say
it so that I can hear it. My heart is listening, Lord; open the ears of my heart and say to my soul, I
am your salvation. Let me run toward this voice and seize hold of
you. Do not hide your face from me: let me die so that I may see it, for not to
see it would be death to me indeed.
Augustine, The Confessions,
translated by Maria Boulding, in The Works of St. Augustine: A Translation for
the 21st Century, Part I-Books, volume 1 (New York: New City Press, 1997), Book
I, chapter 5, paragraph 5, pp. 41-42.
Rev. Shawn J. Smith 