Late Have I Loved Thee: Prayer of St. Augustine

St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) spent much of his youth searching for truth and happiness everywhere except in God. After his conversion, he wrote the Confessions, a long prayer addressed to God that tells the story of his restless heart. Two passages from it have become some of the most quoted prayers in Christian history: the opening line about our restless hearts, and the lament "Late have I loved Thee."

These words speak to anyone who has come to faith late, returned after years away, or still feels divided between God and the world. Pray them slowly, as Augustine did, as a personal conversation with God. The English below is from the classic nineteenth-century translation by E. B. Pusey. His feast is August 28.

The Prayer

Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee. Too late loved I Thee, O Thou Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! too late I loved Thee! And behold, Thou wert within, and I abroad, and there I searched for Thee; deformed I, plunging amid those fair forms which Thou hadst made. Thou wert with me, but I was not with Thee. Things held me far from Thee, which, unless they were in Thee, were not at all. Thou calledst, and shoutedst, and burstest my deafness. Thou flashedst, shonest, and scatteredst my blindness. Thou breathedst odours, and I drew in breath and pant for Thee. I tasted, and hunger and thirst. Thou touchedst me, and I burned for Thy peace.

Sources: St. Augustine, Confessions I.1 and X.27, translated by E. B. Pusey (1838), public domain.

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