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Office Of Readings | Week 29, Friday, Ordinary Time | A Reading From The Letter Of Saint Augustine To Proba | The Spirit Intercedes For Us
‘The Spirit pleads for us.’
Saint Augustine concludes his teaching on prayer by returning to its centre: the movement of the Holy Spirit within the believer. The true object of all prayer is the vision of God — the ‘life of happiness’ in which body and soul, made incorruptible, will behold the divine goodness for ever. Every other request is secondary and derives its meaning from this one desire. Without it, even good things lose their worth; with it, nothing is lacking.
Yet this ultimate good lies beyond our present understanding. We cannot imagine it as it truly is; whatever image arises in the mind must be rejected as inadequate. Thus the soul prays in a kind of ‘instructed ignorance’: it knows what it longs for but cannot describe it. This unknowing is not a defect of faith but its necessary condition, for the eternal life of God cannot be grasped by thought or language.
Here Augustine interprets Saint Paul’s words: ‘The Spirit helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought.’ The Spirit’s intercession is not a speech distinct from ours, but the divine motion that gives life to our desire. When we sigh, when we long without words, it is the Spirit praying in us — the same Spirit who is one with the Father and the Son. The sighs ‘too deep for words’ are the form that hope takes in this life: an expression of love for a reality that cannot yet be seen.
Prayer, therefore, is not merely a human act directed toward God; it is also God’s own work within the human heart, drawing it toward what exceeds its power to name. To pray rightly is to be moved by the Spirit’s longing, to allow divine life to breathe within human weakness. The soul that prays in this way participates already, though obscurely, in the eternal peace for which it waits.
A Reading From The Letter Of Saint Augustine To Proba | The Spirit Intercedes For Us
The person who asks for and seeks this one thing from the Lord makes his petition confidently and serenely. He has no fear that, when he receives it, it may harm him, for if this is absent, anything else he duly receives brings no benefit at all. This is the one, true and only life of happiness, that, immortal and incorruptible in body and spirit, we should contemplate the Lord’s graciousness forever. It is for the sake of this one thing that everything else is sought and without impropriety requested. The person who has this will have all that he wants; in heaven, he will be unable to want, because he will be unable to possess anything that is unfitting.
In heaven is the fountain of life, that we should now thirst for in prayer as long as we live in hope and do not yet see the object of our hope, under the protection of his wings in whose presence is all our desire, so that we may drink our fill from the plenty of his house and be given drink from the running stream of his delights, for with him is the fountain of life, and in his light we shall see light, when our desire will be satisfied with good things, and there will be nothing to ask for with sighs but only what we possess with joy.
Yet, since this is that peace that surpasses all understanding, even when we ask for it in prayer we do not know how to pray for what is right. Certainly we do not know something if we cannot think of it as it really is; whatever comes to mind we reject, repudiate, find fault with; we know that this is not what we are seeking, even if we do not yet know what kind of thing it really is.
There is then within us a kind of instructed ignorance, instructed, that is, by the Spirit of God who helps our weakness. When the Apostle said: If we hope for something we do not see, we look forward to it with patience, he added, In the same way the Spirit helps our weakness; we do not know what it is right to pray for, but the Spirit himself pleads with sights too deep for words. He who searches hearts knows what the Spirit means, for he pleads for the saints according to God’s will.
We must not understand by this that the Holy Spirit of God pleads for the saints as if he were someone different from what God is: in the Trinity the Spirit is the unchangeable God and one God with the Father and the Son. Scripture says: He pleads for the saints because he moves the saints to plead, just as it says: The Lord your God tests you, to know if you love him, in this sense, that he does it to enable you to know. So the Spirit moves the saints to plead with sighs too deep for words by inspiring in them a desire for the great and as yet unknown reality that we look forward to with patience. How can words express what we desire when it remains unknown? If we were entirely ignorant of it we would not desire it; again, we would not desire it or seek it with sighs, if we were able to see it.
Christian Prayer With Jesus
Holy Spirit,
you search our hearts and stir them to prayer.
When we do not know how to speak,
interpret our sighs before the Father.
Teach us to desire what we cannot yet understand,
and to wait in patient hope
for the joy that words cannot express.
Let our weakness be your dwelling,
that your strength may bring us to the vision of God
and to the peace that surpasses understanding.
Amen.
Glossary Of Christian Terms
Life of happiness – Augustine’s term for eternal life: the full and unending contemplation of God.
Instructed ignorance – Knowledge taught by the Spirit that recognises the limits of human understanding and points beyond them.
Sighs too deep for words – From Romans 8:26; the inward movement of the Spirit expressing a desire for the unseen good that cannot be voiced.
Spirit pleads for the saints – The action of the Holy Spirit within believers, shaping their prayers according to God’s will.
Peace that surpasses all understanding – The divine peace described in Philippians 4:7, a peace not derived from knowledge or circumstance but from union with God.
In this homily, Saint John Chrysostom reflects on the Apostle Paul’s words to the Corinthian church: ‘Our mouth is open to you, Corinthians; our heart is enlarged.’ (2 Corinthians 6:11) Chrysostom, known for his deep pastoral insight and command of Scripture, explores how love works to expand the heart, just as heat causes material things to expand. He sees in Paul not only a preacher of doctrine but a man whose heart was capacious—so full of love that it embraced both the faithful and the unbelieving [ … ]
Christian Art | Our Lord Jesus On The Cross | God The Father | God The Son Office Of Readings | Advent December 23rd | A Reading From The Treatise Of Saint Hippolytus Against The Heresy Of Noetus | The Hidden Sacrament Is Revealed ‘The hidden sacrament is revealed.’ In this reading, Saint Hippolytus writes against the Noetic heresy, which denied the real distinction between the Father and the Son by treating them as the same person acting under different names. The purpose of Saint Hippolytus is to defend the Church’s confession of one God who is not solitary, but who exists with his Word and Spirit. Hippolytus begins by setting a principle: knowledge of God comes from the Holy Scriptures, not from speculation or private reasoning. Faith is not shaped by human preference but by what God has chosen to reveal. The Father determines how He is believed, the Son how He is glorified, and the Spirit how He is received. This establishes Scripture as the rule of faith and guards against theological invention. Hippolytus then affirms that God existed alone before creation, with nothing co-eternal alongside Him. At the same time, God was not without reason, wisdom, or power. Hippolytus insists that plurality within God does not compromise divine unity. God contains within himself Word, wisdom, and counsel. Creation begins when God wills and manifests His Word. The Word is not created from nothing but proceeds from God and acts as the agent of creation. The Word is first invisible to the created world, though known to God. When God chooses, He makes the Word visible, described as ‘Light of Light’. This language safeguards both distinction and unity: the Word comes from God and reveals God, without being separate from Him. The manifestation of the Word is ordered towards salvation, so that the world may see and be saved. Hippolytus identifies this Word clearly with the Son of God. Through him all things were made, and he alone comes forth from the Father. The Law and the prophets belong to the same saving plan. God speaks through them by the Holy Spirit, so that they proclaim not their own ideas but the Father’s will. Revelation is therefore coherent: creation, prophecy, and incarnation belong to one divine purpose. Hippolytus appeals to the Gospel of John to show continuity between prophecy and fulfilment. The Word spoken of by the prophets is the Word made flesh. Though the world was made through him, it failed to recognise him. This failure does not negate God’s plan but reveals the depth of the mystery now disclosed. A Reading From The Treatise Of Saint Hippolytus Against The Heresy Of Noetus | The Hidden Sacrament Is Revealed There is, brethren, one God, the knowledge of whom we gain from the Holy Scriptures and from no other source. Whatever things the Holy Scriptures declare, at these let us look; and whatever they teach, let us learn it; and as the Father wills our belief to be, let us believe; and as he wills the Son to be glorified, let us glorify him; and as he wills the Holy Spirit to be bestowed, let us receive him. Not according to our own will, nor according to our own mind, nor yet storming by force the things which are given by God, but even as he has chosen to teach them by the Holy Scriptures, so let us discern them. God, subsisting alone, and having nothing coeval with himself, chose to create the world. And conceiving the world in mind, and willing and uttering the Word, he made it; and at once it appeared, formed it in the way he desired. For us it is sufficient simply to know that nothing was coeval with God. Outside him there was nothing; but he, while existing alone, yet existed in plurality. For he did not lack reason, or wisdom, or power, or counsel. All things were in him, and he was the All. At a time and in a manner chosen by him he made his Word manifest, and through his Word he made all things. He bears this Word in himself, as yet invisible to the created world. He makes him visible, uttering the voice first, and begetting him as Light of Light. He presents him to the world as its Lord; and whereas the Word was visible formerly to God alone, and invisible to the world which is made, God makes the Word visible in order that the world might see him and be able to be saved. This is the mind which came forth into the world and was manifested as the Son of God. All things came into being through him, and he alone comes from the Father. He gave us the Law and the prophets; and in giving them, he made them speak by the Holy Ghost, in order that, receiving the inspiration of the Father’s power, they might declare the Father’s counsel and will. Thus, then, was the Word made manifest, even as the blessed John says. For he sums up the things that were said by the prophets, and shows that this is the Word, by whom all things were made. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by him, and without him nothing was made. And later, The world was made by him, and the world did not know him; he came to his own, and his own did not receive him. Christian Prayer With Jesus Lord God,You are one, and from You come the Word and the Spirit.You have chosen to make Yourself known, not by human effort,but by what You have revealed in the scriptures. You spoke Your Word, and all things were made.You made that Word visible, so that the world might see and be saved.Grant that we may receive what You give,believe what You teach,and worship You as You have shown Yourself to be. Keep us […]
The poem reflects a meditation on human suffering and redemption, as well as a call for divine assistance to transcend the human condition. It is structured in two stanzas, each beginning with the poet’s reflection on human limitations, followed by a plea for union with God, and concluding with a hope for spiritual elevation [ … ]
