Continuous Prayer of St. Augustine
Fra. John of St. Bruno, OCD
Augustine's Reflection on Prayer and Spiritual Life
In the previous section, we could at least briefly glimpse how Augustine’s spiritual and intellectual maturation was often connected with prayer and contemplation. At the edge of his conversion, he realized that nothing could fill and quiet his heart except for the truth in which one can dwell and rest.1 This resting, if it were to last continuously, would actually be the pinnacle of the continuous prayer that we primarily want to talk about. But is a person capable of such permanent resting? We will attempt to answer this question based on Augustine’s statements.
Path to Permanent Communion with God – Stages of Spiritual Life
Augustine has attempted several times to describe the stages of a person's spiritual journey, from the initial struggles with sin and uncontrollable imagination to a certain vision of God that allows for a continual orientation of the soul toward God. He first did this in the treatise On the Greatness of the Soul (De quantitate animae), which we will briefly stop at now. It is predominantly a philosophical treatise in the form of a dialogue, where Augustine answers Evodius’s various questions regarding the human soul. The last part, points 70-80, consists of a long monologue by Augustine, in which he discusses seven functions or stages of the human soul's operation. After the first two stages, which deal with vegetative and sensitive functions that are typical even for animals, and after the third stage, which pertains only to human activities but is common to all, “the learned and the unlearned, the good and the evil,” four further stages follow that depend on the degree of union with God and simultaneously establish it.
At the fourth stage (but the first one we can call supernatural), the soul “begins to gradually distance itself from what defiles it, becomes completely purified and becomes fully clean and beautiful. It strengthens itself against everything that distracts it from its aim. (...) In such a precious act, the soul must still reckon with great effort and fierce struggle against the snares of the world. In this effort, fear of death also persists, mostly not too strong, though sometimes very intense. It is not too strong when faith is solid. However, only to the soul that is already (very) purified is granted the intellectual vision of the truth that the entire world is governed by God's providence and justice, so that no one dies unjustly, even if their death is caused by someone unjust.” Until the soul reaches this state of purification, it holds that “when faith in the aforementioned truths is weaker, fear of death may be stronger, (...) and the perception is weaker as the soul's lesser calm, necessary for contemplating such lofty truths, is due to fear.”2
The first stage (i.e., the overall fourth) is thus a time of struggle, oscillation, effort for purification, returns of fear and uncertainty. Perhaps it can be said that it is a kind of balancing on the edge between dwelling outside oneself and entering one's own interior.3 For further pilgrimage, faith that can gradually be perfected and arrive at a deeper understanding and contemplation of the truths believed is absolutely necessary. However, the condition for this is the purification of the soul, through which those who entrust themselves to God's guidance usually pass. The soul is through this liberated from the captivity of the senses, “dwells with joy in itself, fears for nothing, and does not torment itself for any matter.”4 Thus, it achieves a kind of calm, whose significant mark is overcoming fear, which is typical of the previous stage: the fear of losing the goods that it loves by nature (pleasure, honors, freedom, friendship, and life).5 At this (i.e., the fifth) stage, the soul also gains full awareness of its worth. This fully corresponds to Jesus's words: “Whoever loses their life for me will find it.” (Matt 16:25; Mark 8:35.) When the possessive attitude toward earthly realities has vanished, the deeply ingrained opinion that they give definitive meaning to life has been overcome. And with this “loss,” fear has also vanished, and the false self of the person has also been transcended, allowing one to discover who they truly are and who they are for God.
When the eye of the soul is already healthy, it is possible – at the sixth stage – to direct it toward the highest truths and to the very object of contemplation – to God. “It is one thing for the eye to be clean because our gaze is not directed to vanity, we are not presumptuous or ensnared by delusion. It is another thing to preserve this purity and yet another to direct the gaze that is already calm and certain toward the object contemplated.” However, without previous purification, this turning toward the light-God is not possible: “There are, however, some who wish to contemplate already before their purification and healing. They will be so blinded by the perfect light of truth that they will think that there is not only no good in it, but on the contrary great evil, (...) therefore they will hide in their own darkness, which is the only thing they are capable of enduring due to their own sickness.”6 The excess of God's light is for the unprepared “eye” darkness that it cannot endure, and thus this light is perceived as something negative and even threatening to the person. By this conception, Augustine already hints at the teaching of spiritual purification, which St. John of the Cross will later develop especially.7
However, the one who can endure purification reaches the highest (seventh) stage, which “is not a stage but a definitive state, which is reached through individual stages.” This stage is vision, or the contemplation of truth. “What joy will there be, what pleasure in possessing the highest and true good, (...) I cannot say. To the extent that they deemed it proper, great and incomparable souls communicated this to us.”8
What is the nature of this highest stage of knowledge or activity of the soul? It seems to be a kind of participation in the vision enjoyed by the blessed in heaven. However, Augustine does not further explain the difference between this vision and that of the blessed. It is, however, the highest stage of knowledge, called wisdom, which is the sum of philosophical, theological, and mystical knowledge. It is distinguished from “mere” rational knowledge: “Wisdom belongs to the intellectual knowledge of eternal realities, whereas science pertains to rational knowledge of temporal things.”9 Another aspect of knowledge and wisdom that the soul receives at this stage is the true insight into the value of all things. We have previously suggested that the purified soul gains awareness of its true worth before God. Now Augustine also adds that it recognizes the difference between transitory things and what is lasting. The transitory is, in comparison with God and the soul, almost non-being, even though assessed in and of itself is also beautiful.10
Finally, let us present Augustine's own summarized outline of his teaching on the journey into oneself and beyond oneself, as presented in the work De quantitate animae, because it nicely expresses the small but important differences that exist between the individual stages. It involves the movement of the soul: “to itself, in itself, to God, at God.”11
Let us now return to the aforementioned rapture experienced by Augustine and Monica in Ostia by the Tiber, for it is an event that apparently also depends on the dialogue De quantitate animae.12 In excerpts from Augustine's account in the Confessions, we will see that certain stages of the ascent that both saints went through while “away from the noise of the crowd” pondering, contemplating, and discussing “the eternal happiness of the saints, which eye has not seen, ear has not heard, and which has not appeared in the heart of man,”13 essentially correspond to the stages described in De quantitate animae.
The first stage is crossing the created things, the external to man: “In the fiery rush of love, we ascended to the very Being, when we passed above all material beings and above heaven itself, from which the sun, moon, and stars illuminate the earth.”14 The next is entry into ourselves: “We ascended internally into ourselves and, uplifted and captivated by the beauty of your work, we reached our souls.” The third stage leads to the peak of the ascent – beyond oneself: “And we have also transcended our souls to refresh ourselves in the land of inexhaustible abundance, where you eternally pasture Israel in the meadow of truth, where life is Wisdom (...), (in which) there is no past nor future, only pure being, for (this Wisdom) is eternal, while the past and future is not eternal.” When Augustine and Monica reached this point in their conversation, they experienced a touch of eternal realities, about which they contemplated: “As we conversed and longed for (this Wisdom), our mind was struck by it in its soaring, and something of it was received, and the firstfruits of the spirit were bound.” After this touch of eternity, however, something follows that is not emphasized in De quantitate animae: “(And again) we descended to the empty sound of our mouths, where everything begins and ends with a word.”15 It seems as though Augustine and Monica somehow “in brief” went through, or rather were transported through, all the stages of spiritual development as described in the aforementioned dialogue. The subsequent descent “to the empty sound of words” mentioned in the Confessions could then be interpreted as a return after Augustine was granted insight into the path he still has ahead of him. A second possible interpretation arises from the temporal distance between the two works16 and Augustine's reflection on the event. The saint, indeed, as he spent years striving for prayer and spiritual life, became increasingly aware of the difficulty of experiencing continual communion with God. This is also testified by Nello Cipriani's work, in which he compares Augustine’s reflection on this question at the very beginning and at the end of his Christian life: “At Cassiciacum17, Augustine, fresh convert heavily influenced by Plotinus, had doubts (about the possibility of attaining contemplation here on earth). He also nourished excessive confidence in his intellectual abilities. He was convinced that (...) he would be able, together with his friends, to easily attain a happy and perfect life. However, with the time during which he matured in Christian faith, these illusions gradually faded. So later in the Retractationes he corrected his youthful optimism: “Perfect knowledge of God, in the measure that is possible for man, is according to the Apostle reserved for the future life, which alone deserves the name of a happy life, because there the body, which will become incorruptible and immortal, will yield to the spirit without difficulties and without resistance.”18
It therefore seems that the last stage of the spiritual life spoken of in De quantitate animae can only be fully attained in eternity; until then, one can only fleetingly touch it, as Augustine and Monica did in Ostia. However, even this position does not seem entirely straightforward. Augustine writes that although “they descended to the empty sound of our mouths, where everything begins and ends with a word,” thus to the veiled knowledge of faith,19 however, “the mind was struck in its soaring (...) and the firstfruits of the spirit were bound.”20 What are these firstfruits of the spirit? “The highest part of our being, which governs our life when we live spiritually; by which we can have a deep and vivid sense of God’s presence within us and of our presence in God, regardless of all everyday busyness.”21 Spiritual maturation, spiritual life, and the life of prayer here on earth unfold between these two extremes. Between ignorance, not possessing God and full communion with Him. Continuous prayer will be identical with continuous contemplation of God’s beauty only in eternity; here on earth, this form is not yet achieved. Again, the question returns to us: is it possible to pray continuously here on earth?
Prayer of Desire
The saint himself at several points identifies desire and prayer: “‘Pray without ceasing’ (1 Thess 5:17). What does this mean other than: always have the desire to receive the blessed life – which is nothing other than eternal life – from him who alone can give it?”22 And in his commentary on verse 10 of Psalm 37 (38): “Lord, all my desire is before you,” he writes: “Your desire and your prayer: if there is a continuous desire, there is also a continuous prayer.”23 The significance that the saint ascribes to desire only confirms what has already been said above. A person living the spiritual life lives on the edge between possessing and not possessing God. If they had already fully attained God, they would have no desire; if they did not know God and had not, in a certain way, possessed Him, they would not desire Him. Knowledge of God remains always preserved in the essence of the soul, it can only be covered. “We cannot love and desire something we do not know at all.”24 Therefore, “it cannot be otherwise than that the soul, even before knowing God and before faith and before the conversion of the will to God, which precedes faith, has some knowledge of God, preserves a certain memory of God.”25 This memory is the source of the desire for full communion with God. It can be sparked by a spiritual experience similar to the one Augustine and Monica experienced in Ostia. Objectively, it receives its foundation and support through the virtue of faith: “Faith helps us to know and love God: not as if we did not know or love Him at all but to know Him more clearly and love Him more strongly.” 26 According to Ivánka's interpretation, faith is not “a transition from complete ignorance to knowledge, from complete loss to regaining, but is a renewal, a revitalization, a strengthening of something that has been present in the interior of the soul and has never been entirely lost or forgotten.”27
Faith thus fosters the growth of desire, which is essentially prayer, continuous prayer, for everything that is done should be done with the desire for God and for the sake of God. Faith, however, cannot be genuine if it is not accompanied by the other two theological virtues, hope and love. They are therefore also closely related to prayer and in a sense identify with it: “We pray unceasingly with the desire that arises from faith, hope, and love.”28 At the same time, the opposite also holds true: the authenticity of prayer and desire for God is verified in everyday life, namely through deeds arising from theological virtues, especially from love, from which all other virtues grow. Indeed, to the extent that we love good, we are capable of choosing it, fighting for it, losing much for it, and precisely in this effort for the beloved good, the other virtues can and must manifest: “Choosing this good is prudence, not being deterred by any difficulty is courage, not being deceived by vain hope is temperance, not being led astray by feelings of pride is justice.”29
Virtue is also “the order of love (ordo amoris).”30 The correct “hierarchy of values,” or arrangement of beloved objects, determines whether love will be genuine love, that is, virtuous love, or, on the contrary, a vice: “What must we choose as the most deserving object of our love, if not the one who is above all, namely God? If we give a greater or equal share of our love to someone else, it means we cannot even love ourselves. The closer we approach to the one who is above all, the more we do good to ourselves. To God, we do not approach by walking, but by love, and we are closer to Him the purer the love that leads us to Him. (...) To God, we do not aim by physical walking, but by good actions,31 because He is present everywhere and is wholly present everywhere. (...) Good or evil deeds32 are formed by nothing other than good or evil loves. (...) By our wickedness, we distance ourselves from God, but we are reformed by ordered love, so that being justified, we may be united with the one who is just.”33
Love also has another meaning, very important for the teaching on prayer and communion with God. It enables a deeper knowledge of God: “If we love what we have already in some way known, this love will lead us to a better and fuller understanding. For if you advance in the love that the Holy Spirit has poured into your hearts, (He Himself) will teach you all truth (John 16:13), or – as stated in other codes – will lead you into all truth.”34 Since love is the foundation and goal of the spiritual life, its “stages” are essentially stages of love. In De quantitate animae, we saw that Augustine primarily describes these stages as stages of knowledge, while in De Trinitate he emphasizes that we cannot love anything else but the known subject.35 In the last citation, we have shown that without love, this knowledge cannot achieve fulfillment.36 Love and knowledge thus complement each other, and it seems that at certain moments love somehow precedes knowledge, and the vague, partial knowledge clarifies and brings to perfection.
We can thus summarize the previous section: a person in a state of pilgrimage never fully rests in God, always experiences some inadequacy in their communion with Him. Based on the fact that they are created in God's image and on the knowledge of faith, which can be illuminated by mystical experience, they always have a certain knowledge of God and His love. To the extent that they grow in this knowledge of God and in love for Him, they are continually closer to Him. From this follows that their desire should gradually transform, as should their prayer.37
