When Augustine finally stopped running, he wrote this prayer. It comes from Book X of his Confessions, written around 400 AD, three years after his baptism. If you’ve spent years looking for God in success, achievement, pleasure, or distraction, this is the prayer that names what you’ve been doing.
Late have I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved thee. For behold thou wert within me, and I outside; and I sought thee outside and in my unloveliness fell upon those lovely things that thou hast made. Thou wert with me and I was not with thee. I was kept from thee by those things, yet had they not been in thee, they would not have been at all. Thou didst call and cry to me and break open my deafness; and thou didst send forth thy beams and shine upon me and chase away my blindness; thou didst breathe fragrance upon me, and I drew in my breath and do now pant for thee; I tasted thee, and now hunger and thirst for thee; thou didst touch me, and I have burned for thy peace.
St. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions Book X, c. 397-400 AD
How this prayer works
Augustine is confessing a pattern: he searched for God everywhere except where God was. He looked outside himself, in created things, while God was present within him all along. The prayer moves through the five senses: God called and broke his deafness, shone light and chased his blindness, breathed fragrance and he gasped for air, gave a taste and left him hungry, touched him and set him burning.
Augustine wrote this three years after his conversion at age 32, following a decade and a half in the Manichean sect and years of sexual restlessness. The “late have I loved thee” isn’t self-pity; it’s astonishment that God waited. The phrase “O Beauty so ancient and so new” became a touchstone in Catholic mystical theology, the recognition that God is both eternal and immediate, both origin and surprise.
Pray this when you realize you’ve been searching in the wrong places. Before morning coffee, after scrolling too long, when you recognize the pattern of looking outward for what can only be found within. Let Augustine’s confession become yours.
Carry it through this week when the restlessness returns.
