Augustine wrote this prayer in his Confessions around 400 AD, at the end of a life spent looking for God in the wrong places. If you’ve ever felt you wasted years searching everywhere but the one place that mattered, this is your prayer.
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
This prayer is Augustine’s admission that God was never the one who was absent. Augustine chased philosophy, worldly success, and pleasure for decades, convinced beauty and truth were out there somewhere. God was inside him the whole time. The phrase “late have I loved thee” isn’t self-pity; it’s astonishment that God kept calling through all the noise Augustine made running the other direction.
Augustine uses all five senses to describe conversion: God breaks open his deafness, chases away his blindness, breathes fragrance he finally inhales, offers a taste that leaves him hungry, touches him and sets him on fire. He’s describing what happens when someone finally stops searching and stands still long enough to be found.
Pray this when you realize you’ve been looking for God in your ambitions, your relationships, your plans, while He was waiting in the silence you kept avoiding. Pray it slowly in the morning before you open your phone.
Carry it with you today as a reminder: He was never far.
