Historical Context
Breathe in Me, O Holy Spirit
This is the prayer most people are looking for when they search his name, and it is the one to start with:
Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit,
that my thoughts may all be holy.
Act in me, O Holy Spirit,
that my work, too, may be holy.
Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit,
that I love but what is holy.
Strengthen me, O Holy Spirit,
to defend all that is holy.
Guard me, then, O Holy Spirit,
that I always may be holy.
Amen.
An honest note on where it comes from. The prayer circulates on holy cards under Augustine’s name, and Catholic Culture, which prints it, gives its source simply as “prayers from various holy cards”. Nobody has traced it to anything he wrote. That does not make it a worse prayer — it is short, it is sound, and it is easy to learn by heart — but if you want Augustine’s own voice, it is in the next section.
In His Own Words: The Confessions
The Confessions are not a memoir with prayers in them. The whole book is addressed to God, from the first line to the last, which is why so much of it can be prayed as it stands. It opens like this:
Great are You, O Lord, and greatly to be praised;
great is Your power, and of Your wisdom there is no end.
And man, being a part of Your creation, desires to praise You …
You move us to delight in praising You;
for You have made us for Yourself,
and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.
— Confessions I.1
The passage most people remember him for comes in Book X. Writing as a bishop in his forties, he looks back on the years before his conversion — the career in rhetoric, the searching, the long delay — and it comes out as a single cry:
Too late did I love You, O Fairness, so ancient, and yet so new!
Too late did I love You!
For behold, You were within, and I without,
and there did I seek You;
I, unlovely, rushed heedlessly among the things of beauty You made.
You were with me, but I was not with You. …
You called, and cried aloud, and forced open my deafness.
You gleamed and shine, and chase away my blindness. …
You touched me, and I burned for Your peace.
— Confessions X.27
You will often see this as “Late have I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new” — the same Latin, Sero te amavi, in a newer translation.
A Prayer to Come Back
Also from the Confessions, and older versions of this page carried it in a loose paraphrase. It is genuinely his — the close of Book IV — and it is the prayer for anyone who has drifted and wants to return:
O Lord our God, under the shadow of Your wings let us hope;
defend us, and carry us.
You will carry us both when little,
and even to grey hairs will You carry us;
for our firmness, when it is Thou, then is it firmness;
but when it is our own, then it is infirmity.
Our good lives always with You …
Let us now, O Lord, return, that we be not overturned.
— Confessions IV.16
“Even to grey hairs will You carry us” is Isaiah 46:4, and it is typical of him. Scripture is so worked into his sentences that it is often hard to tell where the Bible stops and Augustine starts.
Let Me Know Myself, Let Me Know You
In his early Soliloquies, written in the months before his baptism, Augustine sets down a four-word prayer that sums up his whole life’s search: noverim me, noverim te — “let me know myself, let me know you.” Later writers built a longer litany out of it, and it is widely printed as his:
Lord Jesus, let me know myself and know you,
and desire nothing save only you.
Let me hate myself and love you.
Let me do everything for the sake of you.
Let me humble myself and exalt you.
Let me think of nothing except you.
Let me die to myself and live in you.
Let me accept whatever happens as from you.
Let me banish self and follow you,
and ever desire to follow you.
Let me fly from myself and take refuge in you,
that I may deserve to be defended by you.
Let me distrust myself and put my trust in you.
Let me cling to nothing save only to you,
and let me be poor because of you.
Look upon me, that I may love you.
Call me, that I may see you,
and forever enjoy you.
Amen.
The first line is his; the rest is the tradition praying in his spirit. “Hate myself” is strong language for modern ears. It means what he means in the Confessions — turning from the self that runs away from God, not despising the person God made.
Light of the Minds That Know You
Attributed to Augustine, and used by Anglicans as the prayer for his feast day. It is a fair summary of his thought — knowing, loving and serving as one movement — whoever first put it into these words:
Eternal God,
who are the light of the minds that know you,
the joy of the hearts that love you,
and the strength of the wills that serve you:
grant us so to know you that we may truly love you,
and so to love you that we may fully serve you,
whom to serve is perfect freedom,
in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
A Prayer to Saint Augustine for a Restless Heart
Saint Augustine,
you spent half your life looking for God everywhere except where he was,
and you did not pretend afterwards that the searching had been wasted.
Pray for me in my restlessness.
When I am chasing the next thing and calling it happiness,
turn me round the way you were turned round.
When I know what I should do and keep saying “not yet”,
pray that I stop saying it.
And when I finally come home,
let me find, as you did, that he was within all along.
Amen.
A Prayer for a Child Who Has Wandered
Augustine’s mother, St Monica, prayed for him for years while he lived with a mistress, joined a sect and went his own way. When she begged a bishop to talk sense into him, the bishop — tired of being asked — sent her away with a sentence she kept for the rest of her life: “Go your way, and God bless you, for it is not possible that the son of these tears should perish” (Confessions III.12). This is the prayer for every parent who knows how that feels.
Saint Monica, you did not stop, and you were right not to.
Saint Augustine, you were the son of those tears,
and you came home in the end.
Pray together for my child,
who has gone somewhere I cannot follow.
Keep me from nagging and from giving up,
which are the two ways I know to fail.
Let my love be the thing they remember when they are ready.
And give me your patience, Monica, for however long this takes.
Amen.
Take Up and Read
His conversion came in a garden in Milan in the summer of 386. He was weeping, unable to take the last step, when he heard a child’s voice from a neighbouring house chanting “Take up and read; take up and read” (Confessions VIII.12). He opened Paul’s letters at random and read Romans 13:13–14 — “not in rioting and drunkenness … but put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” He was baptised by St Ambrose at Easter the following year, and his mother lived just long enough to see it.
A good way to pray with Augustine is to do what he did in the garden: take up a Gospel, read a short passage slowly, and stop when a line catches you.
Best Times for These Prayers
- On 28 August, his feast — and on 27 August, St Monica’s, the day before.
- At Pentecost, or before any decision where you need the Holy Spirit’s guidance.
- When you have drifted from faith and want a way back that does not pretend you never left.
- When praying for a son or daughter who has left the Church.
- Before study, writing or teaching — he is the patron of theologians.
- Whenever you feel restless and cannot name why.
Scripture Connection
“Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, in concupiscence.” — Romans 13:13–14
The verses Augustine read in the garden. He wrote that when he reached the end of the sentence, “all the gloom of doubt vanished away.” Nothing about the passage is subtle, and that was the point: he had spent years looking for an argument, and what he needed was a decision.
Related prayers
The bishop who baptised him has his own page — Prayer to St Ambrose. For parents praying for their children, see A Mother’s Prayer and the Short Prayer for My Son.
If what brought you here is the need to come back, the Repentance Prayer is the next step, and the Prayer to Be a Better Person is about the conversion that comes after.
