Father,
I am seeking;
I am hesitant and uncertain,
But will you, O God,
watch over each step of mine
and guide me."
Confessions 11, 17
You have made us for yourself O Lord,
and our hearts are restless
until they rest in You.
Confessions 1, 1
It is not words that God wants of you,
but your hearts.
Sermon 91, 3
Take advantage of moments of peace and solitude to collect the grains of the
Word of God and store them in the nest of your heart. In moments of
confusion, when you cannot find outside yourself the peace that you seek, you
can retire into yourself and feel at ease with yourself and God.
Meditation on Psalm 36, 11
If then you would really be God's lover, choose God from your innermost
heart, yearn for God with holy desire, love God, be all aglow with God, look
eagerly for God; because you will find nothing more delightful, nothing that can
fill you with more joy, nothing better, nothing more lasting. What could
be more lasting than that One who is everlasting.
Meditation on Psalm 85, 8
I love you Lord with no doubtful love but with absolute
certainty. You pierced my heart with your Word and I fell in love
with you.
Confessions X, 8
I entered into my own depths with you as
guide; and I was able to do so because you were my helper.
Confessions X, 7
Even heaven and earth cannot contain you, any
more than my heart can. I will pray that my heart where you
already have a foothold, may receive more and more of you, until one day
the whole of me will be filled with the whole of you.
Let there spring
up in you this affection ... let it come to such strength
that you may also say from the whole heart, "My soul has been
glued on behind you." What is that glue? The glue
itself is love. Have love by which, as with glue, your soul may be
glued on behind God. Not with God, but behind God, that he may go
before you, and you may follow.
On Ps 62, 17
Leave the Past to God's Mercy,
the Present to
God's Love and
the Future to God's Providence.
I find no safe dwelling for my soul
except in you. Only in you are all my scattered desires brought
into unity; from you no part of me ever strays. At times you
fill me with feelings wholly new and indescribably sweet; if these
ever reached their fullness within me, it would be something alien to
this present life.
Confessions X, 40.65
So I set about finding a way to gain the
strength that was necessary for enjoying you, O God. And I could
not find it until I embraced the mediator between God and Man, the man
Christ Jesus, who is over all things, God blessed forever, who was
calling and saying "I am the way, the truth and the
life."
The God Christ is
the home where we are going.
The Man Christ is the way by which we are going.
Sermon 123
Until there is one who teaches within, the sound we
make is futile ... Let him then speak to you interiorly, in
that place where no human teacher can enter. For you have someone
at your side, but no one can enter your heart. Or rather, let
there be no one in your heart - let Christ be in your heart.
In. 1John 3, 13
And so, admonished to return to myself, I
entered into my innermost parts with you leading me.
I was able to do so because you had become my helper.
I entered and with my soul's eye,
and disordered though it was,
I discovered a changeless light superior to my soul's eye,
superior to my very mind ...
It was the light that had made me.
Love knows this light, O Eternal Truth and True Love and Beloved
Eternity ... You beat back the weakness of my gaze,
powerfully blazing into me, and I tremble with love and dread.
Confessions 7, 10, 16