The most famous passage of St. Augustine's Confessions — his cry of love to God whom he had sought everywhere except within.
Sero te amavi, pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova, sero te amavi! Et ecce intus eras et ego foris, et ibi te quaerebam, et in ista formosa, quae fecisti, deformis irruebam. Mecum eras, et tecum non eram. Ea me tenebant longe a te, quae si in te non essent, non essent. Vocasti et clamasti et rupisti surditatem meam: coruscasti, splenduisti et fugasti caecitatem meam: fragrasti, et duxi spiritum et anhelo tibi: gustavi et esurio et sitio: tetigisti me, et exarsi in pacem tuam.
Late have I loved You, Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved You! Behold, You were within me, and I, outside; and I sought You out there. Unlovely, I rushed heedlessly among the lovely things You have made. You were with me, but I was not with You. Those things kept me far from You which, unless they were in You, would not exist. You called and shouted out and shattered my deafness. You flashed, You blazed, and my blindness fled. You breathed Your fragrance, and I drew in my breath and now I pant for You. I tasted You, and I hunger and thirst for You. You touched me, and I burned for Your peace.
Personal devotion; at retreats; on the feast of St. Augustine (August 28).
St. Augustine wrote the Confessions in his early forties (c. 397–400), about a decade after his baptism by Ambrose at the Easter Vigil of 387. The passage 'Sero te amavi' appears in Book X, where Augustine moves from autobiography to philosophical meditation on memory, time, and the search for God.
The passage is one of the most quoted texts in all of Christian spirituality. Pope Benedict XVI cited it in his encyclical Deus Caritas Est; John Paul II quoted it at the close of Fides et Ratio; Mother Teresa kept a printed copy of it among the few books she carried.
