Augustine of Hippo: Selected Writings (continued)
INTRODUCTION
have learned is to find God in our memory or mind. He is not the mind but the God of the mind. And so Augustine met God in his memory, listened to Him and loved Him, confessing:
Late it was that I loved You, beauty so ancient and so new, late I loved You! And look, You were within me and I was outside, and there I sought for you and in my ugliness I plunged into the beauties that you have made. You were with me and I was not with you. Those outer beauties kept me from you, yet if they had not been in you, they would not have existed at all. You called, you cried out, you shattered my deafness: you flashed, you shone, you scattered my blindness: you breathed fragrance, and I drew in my breath and | pant for you! I tasted and I am hungry and thirsty: you touched me, and I burned for your peace.'®
In Book X Augustine revealed the state of his soul at'the time of writing. He spoke of the variety of his life-forms, his life-levels still in need of an ever greater personal unity if they were to reflect their Exemplar: One God in Threeness. The unity he needed has to be given from above, from God, who presides above the memory to illuminate the mind. He confessed: "Only in You, when my scattered parts are gathered, do I find a stable place for my mind."!? He admitted that after being a priest and a bishop he had not yet arrived at that perfect unity to which, as images of God, we are called. He spoke of this unity, this wholeheartedness in loving God above all things, as the result of true prayer and asceticism.
When in my whole self I shall cling to you united, I shall find no sorrow anywhere, no labor; wholly alive will my life be all full of you. Those whom you fill, you raise up. And now, since I am not yet full of You, Iam a burden to myself.2° %
18. Ibid., X.27. 19. Ibid., X.40. 20. Ibid., X.28.