Saturday, June 15 : Saint Augustine

“You are great, O Lord, and highly to be praised,” (Ps 145[144],3). “Great is your power, and your wisdom is infinite,” (Ps 147[146],5. And man, who being a part of what you have created, desires to praise you; this man, bearing his own mortality about with him, carrying with him a testimony of his own sin, (even this testimony, that “God resists the proud,” (Jas 4,6)) yet this man, this part of what you have created, is desirous of praising you; you so stir him up, that he even delights to praise you. For you have created us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in you… “Those who seek the Lord shall praise him,” (Ps 22[21],27). For they that seek shall find; and finding they shall praise him. I will seek you, O Lord, calling upon you; and I will call upon you, believing in you: for you have been preached to us. My faith, O Lord, calls to you: the faith you have given me and inspired within me by the humanity of your Son and the ministry of your preacher. And how shall I call upon my God, my Lord and God? Because when I invoke him, I call him into myself: and what place is there in me fit for my God to come into me, by which God may come into me; even the God who made heaven and earth? Is it so, my Lord God? Is there anything in me that can contain you? No, indeed, can the “heaven and earth which you have made,” (Gn 1,1) and in which you have made me, in any way contain you?… Since, therefore, I am, how can I entreat you to enter me, who could not have been unless you were first of all in me?… Who shall grant me to repose in you? By whose gift will you enter my heart; and so inebriate it that I may forget my own evils and embrace you, my only good? What are you to me? Let me find grace to speak to you. What am I to you, that you should command me to love you… What you are to me, answer me for your mercy’s sake, O Lord my God: say to my soul: “I am your salvation,” (Ps. 35[34],3). Speak it aloud so that I may hear you. Behold, the ears of my heart are before you, O Lord: open them, and say to my soul, “I am your salvation.” I will run after that voice, and take hold of you.
maronite readings – rosary,team