For Week of April 26, 2021

WEEKLY PRAYER GUIDE

April 26, 2021

Augustine’s Confessions ranks among the greater masterpieces of western literature and has a perennial power to speak to any and every century of believers. This week we will reflect upon the power of the words of one of his prayers, for our personal journey, and for our troubled world.

(2) How shall I call upon my God, my God and Lord? Surely when I call on him, I am calling on him to come into me. But what place is there in me where my God can enter into me? “God made heaven and earth.” (Genesis 1:1). Where may he come to me? Lord my God, is there any room in me which can contain you? Can heaven and earth, which you have made and in which you have made me, contain you? Without you, whatever exists would not exist. Then can what exists contain you? I also have being. So why do I request you to come to me when, unless you were within me. I would have no being at all? I am not now possessed by Hades; yet even there are you (Psalm 138:8): for “even if I were to go down to Hades, you would be present.” Accordingly, my God, I would have no being. I would not have any existence, unless you were in me. Or rather, I would have no being if I were not in you “of whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things” (Romans 11:36). Even so, Lord, even so. How can I call on you to come if I am already in you? Or where can you come from so as to be in me? Can I move outside heaven and earth so that my God may come to me from there? For God has said “I fill heaven and earth” (Jeremiah 23:24). Amen