St. Augustine’s Infancy

(St. Augustine - found here)

“...That infancy of mine died long since, yet I still live. But there is something I would enquire of You, Lord, because Your life is for ever and in You nothing dies: for before the beginning of time, before anything that can even be called ‘before,’ You are—and You are the God and Lord of all that You have created: and before Your face stand the causes of all things transient and the changeless principles of all things that change, and the eternal reasons of all the things of unreason and of time. Therefore, O God, tell me I beg in pity to a creature who needs pity, whether my infancy followed upon some earlier age of my life that had passed away before it. Was the time I spent in my mother’s womb such another age? I have heard something of [my mother’s condition at] that time, and I have seen women big with child. And before that again, O God of my joy? Was I anywhere? Was I anyone? There is none to tell me—neither my parents, nor any man’s experience, nor any memory of my own. Perhaps You laugh at me for seeking to know of such things since it is Your will that I adore You and praise You for what I do know. And I do truly, Lord of heaven and earth, adore You and praise You for my first being and the infancy of which I have now no memory: for You have left man to learn these things about himself from others, to accept much that touches him so closely on the word of his womenfolk.

Clearly then I had being and I had life: and toward the end of my infancy I tried hard to find ways of making my feelings known to others. Whence could such a living being come but from You, Lord? Could any man be his own maker? Or is there any other channel through which being and life should flow into us, save that we are made by You, Lord, to whom ‘being’ and ‘being alive’ are not two separate things, since infinite Being is identical with infinite Life? For You are infinite and in You is no change, nor does today pass away in You. Yet in another sense in You it does pass away, for in You are all such things—they could not even have any being that could pass away unless You upheld them in being. And because Your years do not pass, Your years are today; and no matter how many our days and our fathers’ days have been, they have all passed in Your undying day and from it have received such being and measures as they had: and all the days to come shall similarly pass in Your undying day and shall receive from it their being and measures. But You are still the same. All our tomorrows to the end of time You shall make to be in this Your day; and all our yesterdays from the beginning of time You have made to be in this Your day. What is it to me, if anyone does not understand this? Let him rejoice as he asks: What is this? Let him rejoice, and let him prefer to find You even if he does not find this, rather than to find it and not You with it.”
~St. Augustine (from Confessions)