Dona Nobis Pacem - St. Augustine's Beautiful Prayer
You are familiar with the beginning of The Confessions by St. Augustine. But I bet you never heard this exquisite prayer at the end of The Confessions.
“Give us peace, Lord God, for you have given us all else; give us the peace that is repose, the peace of the Sabbath, and the peace that knows no evening.
This whole order of exceedingly good things, intensely beautiful as it is, will pass away when it has served its purpose: these things too will have their morning and their evening.
“But the seventh day has no evening and sinks towards no sunset, for you sanctified it that it might abide forever.
After completing your exceedingly good works, Lord, you rested on the seventh day though you achieved them in repose; and you willed your book to tell us this as a promise that when our works are finished we too may rest in you, in the Sabbath of eternal life.
“And then you will rest in us, as now you work in us, and your rest will be rest through us as now those works of yours are wrought through us.
But you yourself, Lord, are ever working, ever resting. You neither see for a time nor change for a time nor enjoy repose for a time, yet you create our temporal seeing and time itself and our repose after time. "
“Give us peace, Lord God, for you have given us all else; give us the peace that is repose, the peace of the Sabbath, and the peace that knows no evening.
This whole order of exceedingly good things, intensely beautiful as it is, will pass away when it has served its purpose: these things too will have their morning and their evening.
“But the seventh day has no evening and sinks towards no sunset, for you sanctified it that it might abide forever.
After completing your exceedingly good works, Lord, you rested on the seventh day though you achieved them in repose; and you willed your book to tell us this as a promise that when our works are finished we too may rest in you, in the Sabbath of eternal life.
“And then you will rest in us, as now you work in us, and your rest will be rest through us as now those works of yours are wrought through us.
But you yourself, Lord, are ever working, ever resting. You neither see for a time nor change for a time nor enjoy repose for a time, yet you create our temporal seeing and time itself and our repose after time. "
