I lie exposed to your scrutiny
From the
Confessions of Saint Augustine, Bishop
Lord, you
know me. Let me know you. Let me come to know you even as I am known. You are the strength of my soul; enter it and make it a place
suitable for your dwelling, a possession without
spot or blemish. This is my hope and
the reason I speak. I this hope I
rejoice, when I rejoice rightly. As for
the other things of this life, the less they deserve tears, the more likely will
they be lamented; and the more they deserve tears, the less likely will men
sorrow for them. For behold, you have loved the truth, because the one who does what is
true enters into the light. I wish
to do this truth before you alone by praising you, and before a multitude of
witnesses by writing of you.
O Lord, the
depths of a man’s conscience lie exposed before your eyes. Could anything remain hidden in me, even
though I did not want to confess it to you?
In that case I would only be hiding you from myself, not myself from
you. But now my sighs are sufficient evidence
that I am displeased with myself; that you are my light and source of my joy;
that you are loved and desired. I am
thoroughly ashamed of myself; I have renounced myself and chosen you,
recognizing that I can please neither you nor myself unless you enable me to do
so.
Whoever I
may be, Lord, I lie exposed to your scrutiny.
I have already told of the profit I gain when I confess to you. And I do not make my confession with bodily
words, bodily speech, but with the words of my soul and the cry of my mind
which you hear and understand. When I am
wicked, my confession to you is an expression of displeasure with myself. But when I do good, it consists in not
attributing this goodness to myself. For you, O lord, bless the just man, but
first you justify the wicked. And so I make my confession before you in
silence, and yet not in silence. My
voice is silent, but my heart cries out.
Your, O Lord,
are my judge. For though no one knows a man’s innermost self except the man’s own
spirit within him, yet there is something in a man which even his own
spirit does not know. But you know all
of him, for you have made him. As for
me, I despise myself in your sight, knowing that I am but dust and ashes; yet I
know something of you that I do not know of myself.
True, we see now indistinctly as in a mirror, but
not yet face to face. Therefore, so
long as I am in exile from you, I am more present to myself than to you. Yet do I know that you cannot be overcome, while
I am uncertain which temptations I can resist and which I cannot. Nevertheless, I have hope, because you are faithful
and do not allow us to be tempted beyond our endurance, but along with the
temptation you give us the means to withstand it.
I will
confess, therefore, what I know of myself, and also what I do not know. The knowledge that I have of myself, I
possess because you have enlightened me; while the knowledge of myself that I
do not yet possess will not be mine until my darkness shall be made as the
noonday sun before you face.
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