As St. Augustine comments on the Psalms, he will often bring up connected scripture passages and explain them as well. Because of this, though the sermons are called “Expositions of the Psalms,” they could also be seen as great commentaries on a wide swath of scripture outside of the Psalms. He speaks to the meaning of the words in the Psalms, but so often uses his sermon as a means to teach whatever else happens to be on his mind.
We would call this a tangent nowadays, but for St. Augustine it was an effective rhetorical teaching device. People expected him to preach for a long time, and so filling that time by teaching on more than just the “assigned” psalm gave him a lot of leeway to flesh out the deeper meanings of the lines in the psalms and their connection to the rest of scripture.
In his commentary on Psalm 37, he engages in this sort of “tangent” to speak of St. Paul’s famous injunction, “Pray without ceasing.” St. Augustine recognizes that we can’t constantly be saying and thinking words to God. He recognized that people sang psalms while they worked and tried to pray often, but “without ceasing” seemed to be (and is!) humanly impossible – if, that is, you are thinking of prayer simply as speaking words to God.
But St. Augustine would have agreed with St. John Damascene who defined prayer as “the raising of one’s mind and heart to God.” (CCC 2559). St. Augustine focused on the desire of the heart in addition to the words spoken. Yes, we need to speak words to God – we need to make a sacrifice of time to pray with words. But, we can’t do that without ceasing. What we can do without ceasing is to desire God and his peace.
St. Augustine writes:
“Let your desire too be before [God], and there your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you. This very desire is your prayer, and if your desire is continuous, your prayer is continuous. The apostle meant what he said, Pray without ceasing (1 Thes 5:17).”
For Augustine, this “desire” is nearly synonymous with “charity.” We desire what we love and vice versa. While charity may spring forth in holy activity, it comes out of a desire of the heart.
He thus continues, “The chilling of charity is the silence of the heart; the blazing of charity is the heart’s clamor. If your charity abides all the time, you are crying out all the time; if you are crying out all the time, you are desiring all the time; and if you are desiring, you are remembering rest” (Expositions of the Psalms, 37.14. Translated by Maria Boulding).
In this vein, the charity that dwells in our heart by grace, and overflows into actions of love of God and neighbor, is a real desire for the life of God. As we desire that heavenly life, and journey toward it in Christian discipleship, we are interiorly praying with a prayer of desire. This interior desire sets aflame the words of prayer that we pray and makes our acts of charity be in accord with God’s holy will.
Father, send us your Holy Spirit. Draw us close to your Son. Give light to our minds and lead us in your paths. Help us desire what you desire, and above all, to desire you. Come, Holy Spirit, set us on fire with your love – set us on fire with desire for God!