A Prayer to Know God and Soul
by St. Augustine of Hippo
Feast of Sts Methodius & Cyril, Equal to the Apostles & Illuminators of the Slavs
Anno Domini 2020, May 11
O God, Founder of the Universe, help me, that, first of all, I may pray aright; and next, that I may act as one worthy to be heard by Thee; and finally, set me free. God, through whom all things are, which of themselves could have no being; God, who dost not permit that to perish, whose tendency it is to destroy itself! God, who hast created out of nothing this world, which the eyes of all perceive to be most beautiful! God, who dost not cause evil, but dost cause that it shall not become the worst! God, who dost reveal to those few fleeing for refuge to that which truly, is, that evil is nothing! God, through whom the Universe, even with its perverse part, is perfect! God, to whom dissonance is nothing, since in the end the worst resolves into harmony with the better! God, whom every creature capable of loving, loves, whether consciously or unconsciously!
God, in whom all things are, yet whom the shame of no creature in the universe disgraces, nor his malice harms, nor his error misleads! God, who dost not permit any save the pure to know the true! God, Father of Truth, Father of Wisdom, Father of the True and Perfect Life, Father of Blessedness, Father of the Good and the Beautiful, Father of Intelligible Light, Father of our awakening and enlightening, Father of that pledge which wars us to return to Thee!
Thee do I invoke, God, Truth, in whom and by whom and through whom are all things true which are true; God, Wisdom, in whom and by whom and through whom are all wise who are wise; God, true and perfect Life, in whom and by whom and through whom those live who do truly and perfectly live; God, Blessedness, in whom and by whom and through whom are all blessed who are blessed; God, the Good and the Beautiful, in whom and by whom and through whom are all things good and beautiful, which are good and beautiful; God, Intelligible Light, in whom and by whom and through whom all shine intelligibly, who do intelligibly shine; God, whose kingdom is that whole realm unknown to sense; God, from whose kingdom law for even these lower realms is derived; God, from whom to turn is to fall; to whom to turn is to rise; in whom to abide is to stand; God, from whom to go out is to waste away; unto whom to return is to revive; in whom to dwell is to live; God, whom no one, unless deceived, loses; whom no one, unless admonished, seeks; whom no one, unless purified, finds; God, whom to abandon is to perish; whom to long for is to love; whom to see is to possess; God, to whom Faith excites, Hope uplifts, Love joins; God, through whom we overcome the enemy, Thee do I supplicate!
God, whose gift it is that we do not utterly perish; God, by whom we are warned to watch; God, through whom we discriminate good things from evil things; God, through whom we flee from evil and follow after good; God, through whom we yield not to adversity; God, through whom we both serve well and rule well; God, through whom we discern that certain things we had deemed essential to ourselves are truly foreign to us, while those we had deemed foreign to us, while those we had dreamed foreign to us are essential; God, through whom we are not held fast by the baits and seductions of the wicked; God, through whom the decrease of our possessions does not diminish us; God, through whom our better part is not subject to our worse; God, through whom death is swallowed up in victory! God, who dost turn us about in the way; God, who dost strip us of that which is not, and clothes us with that which is; God, who dost make us worthy of being heard; God, who dost defend us; God, who dost lead us into all truth; God, who dost speak all good things to us; God, who dost not deprive us of sanity nor permit another to do so; God, who dost recall us to the path; God, who dost lead us to the door; God, who dost cause that it is open to those who knock; God, who givest us the bread of Life; God, through whom we thirst for that water, which having drunk, we shall never thirst again; God, who dost convince the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment; God, through whom the unbelief of others doth not move us; God, through whom we reprobate the error of those who deem that souls have no deserving in Thy sight; God, through whom we are not in bondage to weak and beggarly elements; God, who dost purify and prepare us for divine rewards, propitious, come Thou to me!
In whatever I say do Thou come to my help. O Thou one God, one true Eternal Substance, where is no discord, no confusion, no change, no want, no death; where is all harmony, all illumination, all steadfastness, all abundance, all life; where nothing is lacking and nothing redundant; where Begetter and Begotten are one; God, whom all things serve which do serve and whom every good soul obeys! God, by whose laws the poles rotate, the stars pursue their courses, the sun leads on the day, the moon tempers the night, and the whole order of the Universe – through days by the alternations of light and darkness; through months by the waxing and waning of moons; through years by the successions of spring, summer, autumn, and winter; through cycles by the completing of the sun’s course; through vast eons of time by the return of the stars to their first risings – preserves by these unvarying repetitions of periods, so far as sensible matter may, the marvelous immutability of things; God, by whose laws forever standing, the unstable motion of mutable things is not allowed to fall into confusion and is, throughout the circling ages, recalled by curb and bit to the semblance of stability; by whose laws the will of the soul is free, and rewards to the good, and penalties to the wicked, are everywhere distributed by unchangeable necessity; God, by whom all good flows toward us, all evil is driven from us; God, above whom, outside whom, without whom, is nothing; God, beneath whom, in whom, with whom, is everything; who hast made man after Thine own image and likeness, which he who knows himself discovers; Hear, hear, hear me! My God, my master, my king, my father, my cause, my hope, my wealth, my honor, my home, my country, my salvation, my light, my life! Hear, hear, hear me, in that way of Thine, known best to few!
At last I love Thee alone, Thee alone follow, Thee alone seek, Thee alone am I ready to serve; for Thou alone, by right, art ruler; under Thy rule do I wish to be. Command, I pray, and order what Thou wilt, but heal and open my ears that I may hear Thy commands, heal and open my eyes that I may see Thy nod; cast all unsoundness from me that I may recognize Thee! Tell me whither to direct my gaze that I may look upon thee, and I hope that I shall do all things which Thou commandest! […]
If they who take refuge in Thee find Thee by faith, give me faith! If by virtue, give me virtue! If by knowledge, give me knowledge! Increase my faith, increase my hope, increase my charity, O Goodness of Thine, unique and admirable! […]
This do I implore Thy most excellent mercy, that Thou convert me in my inmost self to Thee, and, as I incline toward Thee, let nothing oppose; and command that so long as I endure and care for this same body, I may be pure and magnanimous and just and prudent, a perfect lover and learner of Thy wisdom, a fit inhabitant of a dwelling place in Thy most blessed Kingdom!
Amen and Amen!
~Soliloquies,
Bk 1, Ch 1
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"What is it that has ordered the things of heaven and those of earth, the things which move through the air and those which move in the water; nay, rather the things which proceeded them: heaven and earth and the natures of fire and water? What is it that combined and arranged them...set them into motion and put them on their unceasing and unhindered course?..But who is the architect of these things? Or did not he who made them also bring them into being? We shall certainly not attribute such power to spontaneity." On the Orthodox Faith, Chapter 3 This comes after St. John of Damascus sets out to delineate between the created and the uncreated, a fact which, while at the core of existence, seems for him to be, for this very reason, the simplest to believe. Everything but God is created and, thus, susceptible to change. This means people, but this also means demons, angels, the rest of the created order across the entire cosmos. Everything is vulnerable to unrest. Except for God. If you have ever tried to explain the Holy Trinity to a child for the first time, maybe you have felt as I have the weightier, inexpressible side of God's unchangeability: how do I possibly communicate this essential fact to the person in front of me? (This is usually when my faint stutter starts to pop up again.) I like that here, like St. Patrick reaching for a three-leaf clover, St. John brings us back to earth to better understand the cosmos. Fire and water are no less mysteries than heaven and earth. And yet here we are, cooking and washing, eating and drinking, filled and sustained on what we can neither fully explain nor claim to have created. Only God is unchanging. Vice versa, God is the only constant we need. Maybe the rest is better left unsaid. LUKE TAYLOR GILSTRAP is Vice President of the Board of Directors for Eighth Day Institute. His poems have appeared in Spiritus, Ekstasis (Christianity Today), and Relief Journal, among others. He lives happily in Wichita, Kansas with his wife and three sons.
"Now, one who would speak or hear about God should know beyond any doubt that in what concerns theology and the Incarnation not all things are inexpressible and not all are capable of expression, and neither are all things unknowable nor are they all knowable. That which can be known is one thing, whereas that which can be said is another, just as it is one thing to speak and another to know. Furthermore, many of those things about God which are not clearly perceived cannot be fittingly described, so that we are obliged to express in human terms things which transcend the human order. Thus, for example, in speaking about God we attribute to Him sleep, anger, indifference, hands and feet, and the like." On the Orthodox Faith, Chapter 2 When I was studying Fiction in graduate school, one of the first methods I learned to really situate the reader in the story you were about to tell them was disorientation; if you wanted to ground them in one story, first you had pull the rug out from under their feet. So it's fitting that in the beginning of St. John Damascene's On the Orthodox Faith, before rebuilding our foundation, he first puts us squarely in limbo, seesawing back and forth between certainty and uncertainty. To paraphrase, there is no doubt (certainty) that about God some things can be expressed...but not all things (uncertainty). Some things about God are truly knowable (certainty), but some are unknowable (uncertainty). Oh, and while we're speaking about God (certainty), let's admit there's a gap, too, between what we say and what we know (uncertainty). My favorite line in this spiraling excerpt, "...it is one thing to speak, and another to know," takes me back to the final lines in Wendell Berry's poem, "How to Be a Poet," which he wrote primarily as a reminder to himself: Accept what comes from silence. Make the best you can of it. Of the little words that come out of the silence, like prayers prayed back to the one who prays, make a poem that does not disturb the silence from which it came. Wherever your preferences fall on the cataphatic or apophatic spectrum of theology (whether you lean more toward what we can say about God or what we cannot), Berry's poem, I think, would nod along with St. John: before we say too much, let our words be preserved by the silence from which they came. I'm thinking of the silence, that filling, restorative quiet I feel when I step into a cathedral or in some of my favorite moments with my kids in the early hours. Even before praying, can we hear the One already praying in us? Let's start there. LUKE TAYLOR GILSTRAP is Vice President of the Board of Directors for Eighth Day Institute. His poems have appeared in Spiritus, Ekstasis (Christianity Today), and Relief Journal, among others. He lives happily in Wichita, Kansas with his wife and three sons.
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