Prayers from Confessions by St. Augustine

(St. Augustine)

“I will love You, O Lord, and thank You, and confess unto Your name, because You have put away from me these so wicked and nefarious acts of mine.

To Your grace I attribute it, and to Your mercy, that You have melted away my sin as it were ice. To Your grace also I attribute whatsoever of evil I have not committed; for what might I not have committed, loving as I did the sin for the sin’s sake?

Yes, all I confess to have been pardoned me, both those which I committed by my own perverseness and those which, by Your guidance, I committed not.”

. . .

“For Your hands, O my God, in the hidden design of Your Providence, did not desert my soul; and out of the blood of my mother’s heart, through the tears that she poured out by day and by night, was a sacrifice offered to You for me; and by marvellous ways did You deal with me.

It was You, O my God, who did it, for the steps of a man are ordered by the Lord, and He shall dispose his way. Or how can we procure salvation but from Your hand, remaking what it has made?”

~St. Augustine (Confessions 2.7.15 and 5.7.13)