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Prayer of Paul VI before the tomb of Saint Augustine (1960)

by OAR

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Augustine, is it not true that you call us to interior life? That life, which our modern education geared toward the external world, which allows to weaken, and almost leads to tedium? We do not know how to recollect ourselves anymore, we do not know how to meditate anymore, we do not know how to pray anymore.

If then we enter into our spirit, we enclose ourselves within, and we lost the sense of external reality; if we get out, we lost the sense and taste for the interior reality and truth that only the window of interior life reveals to us. We do not know how to establish anymore the right rapport between immanence and transcendence; we do not know how to find anymore the way of truth and reality, because we have forgotten its point of departure, which is interior life, and its point of arrival, who is God

Summon us, O Saint Augustine, to our very selves; teach us the value and the immensity of the interior kingdom; remind us of your words: «Through my soul, I shall ascend . . . » instill in our hearts your passion as well: «O truth, O truth, whose profound sighs were ascending . . . toward you in the interior of my soul. »

O Augustine, be a teacher of interior life to us; let it be that as we regain it, we regain our very selves, and reentering into possession of our soul, there we can discover inside the reflection, the presence, the action of God, and that, being docile to the prompting of our true nature, and still more docile to the mystery of his grace, we can reach wisdom, and with the thought, we can reach the Truth, with the Truth, Love, and with Love the fullness of Life who is God.