St. Augustine Answers 101 Questions on Prayer
38. If contemplation is the height of all prayer, why should we use vocal prayer?
"Relishing continual desire joined to the exercise of faith, hope, and charity, we `pray always.' Nonetheless, at certain stipulated times we employ words in our prayer to God. And it is by signs such as these that we correct ourselves and discover the degree of progress obtained in this desire, in order to burn even more and achieve an increase in strength. According to the proportion of the ardor of our desire before a prayer is uttered, so will be its effectiveness."107
Thus Augustine is saying that the effect of vocal prayer on the soul is threefold:
• It acts as a stimulus.
• It is a gauge with which to measure our growth in prayer.
It is a means of spiritual growth because it increases desire for God.
Elsewhere, St. Augustine prescribes vocal prayer for his monks - both in community at determined hours of the day and in private according to possibilities and the desire to do so.103
He even points to his own experience of vocal prayer in common and private:
"God has said to him, Offer to God the sacrifice of praise ... I will arise daily and make my way to church, and I will say a hymn at matins, another at vespers, the third and fourth I say at home, and daily do I offer the sacrifice of praise and offer myself to my God. You do well if you, too, act
Augustine speaks of prayer as ineffable jubilation arising from the abundance of joy, which can neither be silent nor speak. And on the other hand, it is the recourse of the lonely. "I have read your letter in which you complain of your solitude and being forsaken by your friends ... But what else could I counsel you than that which you assuredly are already doing: commune with your own soul, elevate it to God as far as you can; because in him you possess even us in a firmer bond."10
Thus private prayer is also societal. Inseparable from common prayer, it prepares the soul for a more efficacious common prayer - especially liturgical prayer, which the Second Vatican Council calls the "source and summit" of Christian life."'
39. How is the liturgy the "source and summit"?
The call to Sunday Mass had a soothing effect on Augustine's sensitive soul. Man, he says, needs to rest. And what better way to rest than to rest in God?
"Now the souls of men, both good and evil ones, love rest, but how they might attain what they love is for the most part unknown to them. And as bodies seek for their weight, so, too, do souls seek exactly the same thing for their love - a resting place ... Man's soul struggles onward toward what it loves so that it might rest upon reaching it. When the soul finds its delight in God, there she finds true, certain, eternal rest, for which it had vainly sought in other objects. Hence, the counsel found in the Psalms was laid down, Find your delight in the LORD, who will give you your heart's desire (Ps. 37:4).1112
Holiness, says Augustine, is linked to the Sabbath.
40. Can song really be counted as prayer?
St. Augustine does not only speak of the merits of sung prayer; he also tells of its effect on his own soul: "How much did I weep at your hymns and canticles, so moved was I by the voices of your dulcet-voiced Church. The voices flowed into my ears and truth poured into my heart, spilling over into my devotion and tears, and thus was I blessed.""' "When the Church's hymns are clearly sung with wavering voice, I recognize the usefulness of this tradition ..."114
"Behold, he practically intones the hymn for you. Do not search for the words as if you could give form to a hymn that would please God. Sing with jubilation.
"What does `jubilation' mean? To understand without explaining the word that the heart sings ... Like those who are so overcome with joy in singing that they cannot express the words of the song and let the syllables drop from their lips and give themselves over to the melody of jubilation. Jubilee is a sort of sound which means that the heart wants to give birth to that which cannot be uttered. And who deserves such jubilation if not the ineffable God? And ineffable is that which cannot be said or even touched. What remains if not jubilation in that the heart opens itself to a wordless joy, and the joy increases beyond the limits of the spoken
"Singing is proper to one in love.""' Certainly, Augustine had experienced human love, but the divine love which invaded his soul took possession of his whole being. Such a state can be somewhat precarious, and he recognized the importance of protecting the heart weakened by Original Sin from other loves. Hence his proscription of all singing amongst his monks, save that which is prescribed in the Rule."'