Make Us Love What You Command.

Almighty God, give us the increase of faith, hope, and love; and, that we may obtain what you have promised, make us love what you command; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Saint Augustine, the fourth century bishop, influenced Western Christianity more than most. A great theologian, saint and Church Father, he penned fourteen volumes of theology, sermons, letters, etc., explaining and proliferating our great Christian faith. Of his many classics, the Confessions is one of his most important works.

Because this week’s collect implores Almighty God to make us love what he commands, something also prayed by Augustine, I am including one of his quotes for meditation. Although his vernacular is a bit archaic to our modern ears, his words evince our same longings and struggles. I never use words like continence (constraint, discretion, self-control, willpower, self-denial) but I recognize my need for God to nurture these in me, along with faith and hope and love (Galatians 5:22–23).

As we ask God to craft a love for what he commands, it is my prayer that we are set on fire for him.

“On your exceedingly great mercy rests all my hope. Give what you command, and then command whatever you will. You order us to practice continence. A certain writer tells us, I knew that no one can be continent except by God’s gift, and that it is already a mark of wisdom to recognize whose gift this is (Wisdom 8:21). By continence the scattered elements of the self are collected and brought back into the unity from which we have slid away into dispersion; for anyone who loves something else along with you, but does not love it for your sake, loves you less. O Love, ever burning, never extinguished, O Charity, my God, set me on fire! You command continence: give what you command, and then command whatever you will.”

Vol. I, The Confessions of St. Augustine, Book 10, Chapter 29