“You called me; you cried aloud to me; you broke my barrier of deafness. You shone upon me; your radiance enveloped me; you put my blindness to flight. You shed your fragrance about me; I drew breath and now I gasp for your sweet odour. I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst for you. You touched me, and I am inflamed with love of your peace” (St. Augustine, Confessions.X.xxvii).
Confessions is a deeply human portrait of the Christian life. Raw and compelling, St. Augustine’s work has remained a beloved classic of reading for Christians of all kinds since its composition in the 4th century. Separated by time, culture, and circumstance, it’s remarkable how we still see ourselves in the words of the great church father’s personal spiritual life.
In this work, Augustine sought to demonstrate how the pains and temptations of his own life were no less grim than that of any other Christian. While its particular expression is unique to Augustine, the experience of being a person, lost apart from God, is no less true for a Christian today than it was in late antiquity.
Augustine demonstrates through his confessional work that he could do nothing to save himself from his pain or pull himself toward the God who sought to save him. Only through relentless vulnerability could Augustine dare to draw near to holiness and allow God to shape him into the great theologian we know today.
It is only through utter desperation that we are made vulnerable enough for our Heavenly Father to draw near and purify our hearts. I see this as the greatest lesson of Confessions and the truth that has attracted Christians to the text for so many years.
The quiet tears that roll down Augustine’s face and softly shape the narrative of his life reveal the spiritual practice of intimacy—a practice every Christian must develop, without exception. We cannot muscle our way through the ups and downs of life, guarded in the presence of our Creator. If we truly want to be shaped into the image of the one who died to save us, we must relinquish all that we are into his hands. This is not easy. It is not something we do once. It is a task that we must continuously repeat throughout our lives to invite God in—or rather, to notice how He is already at work in us.
Scripture demonstrates the importance of practicing intimacy to remain close to God. And no Biblical figure demonstrates this as prolifically as David, the man after God’s own heart. The words prayed by David are the ones Augustine turns to in his deepest despair, right before his conversion:
“Lord will you never be content? Must we always taste your vengeance? Forget the long record of our sins” (Psalms 6:3, 4; 78:5, 8).
Augustine’s prayers also echo the language of Song of Songs. Radically, his language demonstrates how Song of Songs is not merely the tale of two abstract lovers, but the story of radical, intimate love between each of us and God. Once we have opened ourselves up in terrifying vulnerability, we there meet the God who “spoke words of love and inflamed our hearts, and now we hasten after the fragrance of his perfumes” (Confessions XIII.xv; Song of Songs 1:3).
Confessions beckons us to look toward our own life to ask ourselves honestly where we still need to surrender our innermost selves to God. What are you still holding onto in your prayer life?
What vulnerability do you dare not touch for fear of the Lord asking you to release it to Him? I pray that this look into Confessions encourages you to be bold in your surrender to God. When we invite the Lord to transform our lives, we will find the Gordon community transformed as well. How bold in our love would we become by supporting one another in the journey of intimacy with God, transformed by His love.
As Augustine demonstrates, the practice of intimacy inevitably persists until we see the natural state of who we are when we are at rest in God: A state of ceaseless praise. The realization of this end is how Augustine opens his most intimate Confessions:
“The thought of you stirs [man] so deeply that he cannot be content unless he praises you, because you made us for yourself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in you” (St. Augustine, Confessions I.i).