I am still with St. Augustine as our hundred-year-old gave me this prayer at breakfast yesterday. I was always struck by this passage and so decided to copy it here:
"Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet, if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace."
Imagine how I once struggled as a college student to translate that passage in "The Confessions of Saint Augustine"!
I love the line: "You were with me, but I was not with you." That says what so often happens to me.
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