St. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine Book III Chapter 10
"...Scripture enjoins nothing but love, and censures nothing but lust, and moulds men's minds
accordingly...By love I mean the impulse of one's mind to enjoy God of his own account and to
enjoy oneself and one's neighbor on account of God. What unbridled lust does to corrupt a
person's own mind and body is called wickedness and what it does to harm another person
is called wrongdoing. All sins can be divided into these two kinds, but wickedness comes first.
Once it has depleted the mind and as it were, bankrupted it, it rushes on to commit wrongdoing in
order to remove the obstacles to wickedness or to find assistance for it. Similar, what love does to
benefit itself is self-interest, and what it does to benefit a neighbor is known as kindness. And
here self-interest comes first, because nobody can do good to another out of resources which he
does not possess. The more the realm of lust is destroyed [through self-interest], the more the
realm of love is increased."
http://www.ourladyswarriors.org/saints/augcon8.htm
Confessions
St. Augustine
Is there anything in me, O Lord my God, that can contain thee?
With what scourges of rebuke did I not lash my soul to make it follow me, as I was struggling to
go after thee
Who am I, and what is my nature?
I waged with my soul in the chamber of my heart, was raging inside my inner dwelling,
agitated both in mind and countenance…
Finally, in the very fever of my indecision, I made many motions with my body; like men do
when they will to act but cannot, either because they do not have the limbs or because their
limbs are bound or weakened by disease, or incapacitated in some other way. Thus if I tore my
hair, struck my forehead, or, entwining my fingers, clasped my knee, these I did because I willed
it. But I might have willed it and still not have done it,
Most high, most excellent, most potent, most omnipotent; most merciful and most just; most
secret and most truly present; most beautiful and most strong; stable, yet not supported;
unchangeable, yet changing all things; never new, never old; making all things new, yet bringing
old age upon the proud, and they know it not; always working, ever at rest; gathering, yet needing
nothing; sustaining, pervading, and protecting; creating, nourishing, and developing; seeking, and
yet possessing all things.
The house of my soul is too narrow for thee to come in to me; let it be enlarged by thee. It is in
ruins; do thou restore it…
Is any man skillful enough to have fashioned himself? Or is there any other source from
which being and life could flow into us, save this, that thou, O Lord, hast made us -- thou with
whom being and life are one, since thou thyself art supreme being and supreme life both together.
To love and to be loved was sweet to me, and all the more when I gained the enjoyment of
the body of the person I loved.
For I was not only beloved but also I secretly reached the climax of enjoyment; and yet I was
joyfully bound with troublesome tics, so that I could be scourged with the burning iron rods
of jealousy, suspicion, fear, anger, and strife. In my wretchedness, I loved to grieve; and I
sought for things to grieve about.
In those years I had a mistress, to whom I was not joined in lawful marriage. She was a
woman I had discovered in my wayward passion, void as it was of understanding, yet she
was the only one; and I remained faithful to her and with her I discovered, by my own experience,
what a great difference there is between the restraint of the marriage bond contracted with a view
to having children and the compact of a lustful love, where children are born against the parents'
will
Thus I fretted, sighed, wept, tormented myself, and took neither rest nor counsel, for I was
dragging around my torn and bloody soul. It was impatient of my dragging it around, and yet I
could not find a place to lay it down. Not in pleasant groves, nor in sport or song, nor in fragrant
bowers, nor in magnificent banquetings, nor in the pleasures of the bed or the couch; not even in
books or poetry did it find rest. All things looked gloomy, even the very light itself
And what did it profit me that I could read and understand for myself all the books I could get in
the so-called "liberal arts," when I was actually a worthless slave of wicked lust?
But what is it that I love in loving thee? Not physical beauty, nor the splendor of time, nor the
radiance of the light -- so pleasant to our eyes -- nor the sweet melodies of the various kinds of
songs, nor the fragrant smell of flowers and ointments and spices; not manna and honey, not the
limbs embraced in physical love -- it is not these I love when I love my God. Yet it is true that I
love a certain kind of light and sound and fragrance and food and embrace in loving my God,
who is the light and sound and fragrance and food and embracement of my inner man -- where
that light shines into my soul which no place can contain, where time does not snatch away the
lovely sound, where no breeze disperses the sweet fragrance, where no eating diminishes the food
there provided, and where there is an embrace that no satiety comes to sunder. This is what I love
when I love my God.
Obviously thou commandest that I should be continent from "the lust of the flesh, and the lust
of the eyes, and the pride of life."[348] Thou commandest me to abstain from fornication, and
as for marriage itself, thou hast counseled something better than what thou dost allow. And
since thou gavest it, it was done -- even before I became a minister of thy sacrament.
And is there so much of a difference between myself awake and myself in the moment when
I pass from waking to sleeping.
But now my years are spent in mourning. [452] And thou, O Lord, art my comfort, my eternal
Father. But I have been torn between the times, the order of which I do not know, and my
thoughts, even the inmost and deepest places of my soul, are mangled by various
commotions until I shall flow together into thee, purged and molten in the fire of thy love.
O Lord my God, what a chasm there is in thy deep secret! How far short of it have the
consequences of my sins cast me? Heal my eyes, that I may enjoy thy light.
I had fallen into that darkness and was darkened thereby. But in it, even in its depths, I came
to love thee. I [they say] that thou didst collect and fashion and weave them together, as if from
thy conquered enemies thou didst raise up the walls of the universe; so that, built into the
ramparts of the building, they might not be able a second time to rebel against thee. And, even of
other things, they say that thou didst neither make them nor arrange them -- for example, all flesh
and all the very small living creatures, and all things fastened to the earth by their roots. But [they
say] a hostile mind and an alien nature -- not created by thee and in every way contrary to thee
-- begot and framed all these things in the nether parts of the world. [647] They who speak thus
are mad [insani], since they do not see thy works through thy Spirit, nor recognize thee in them.