What does Saint Augustine teach about prayer? Discover how the Bishop of Hippo explains the Lord’s Prayer, perseverance, and trust in God in the Letter to Proba.
Friar Enrique Eguiarte, OAR, one of the leading contemporary specialists on Saint Augustine, introduces us to the Letter to Proba, considered by many scholars as the great Augustinian treatise on prayer. Through this text, the Bishop of Hippo explains how to learn to pray, what we should ask of God, why the Lord’s Prayer is the model for all Christian prayer, and how to live a trusting relationship with the Lord even when He seems to remain silent. Sixteen centuries later, his teachings continue to illuminate the path for those who wish to deepen their spiritual life.
Introduction
Read the Letter to Proba
Within the vast literary production of Saint Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo did not dedicate any specific work to treating prayer systematically. This does not mean, however, that this subject occupied a secondary place in his thought or that it lacked importance for him. On the contrary, as with other great matters of spiritual and Christian life, his teachings on prayer appear scattered throughout numerous works, where they return time and again with remarkable depth.
Nevertheless, there is a writing that could well be considered the authentic “Augustinian treatise on prayer”: Letter 130. In it, Saint Augustine addresses this issue almost exclusively, reflecting on what prayer is, how it should be done, when to pray, and what its true meaning is in the life of the believer.
The letter is addressed to Proba, a Roman noblewoman, a widow belonging to one of the most influential families of the Empire. Saint Augustine invites her to discover in her own condition of widowhood—marked by absence, fragility, and the experience of desolation—a privileged occasion to open her heart to God. True prayer, the Bishop of Hippo explains, is born precisely from the recognition of our need for God and from the deep desire to love Him and let ourselves be loved by Him.
Despite having been written more than sixteen hundred years ago, this letter remains surprisingly relevant. We live in a society where, alongside noise and distraction, there is also a growing longing for God, a search for meaning, a desire for interiority, and a need for spaces of silence and contemplation. With simple and deeply human language, Saint Augustine offers in these pages orientations of extraordinary richness for learning to pray, returning to one’s own heart, and entering into a living and transformative dialogue with God.
What does Saint Augustine teach about prayer?
1. Praying from fragility to place hope in God
From the beginning of the letter, Saint Augustine shows Proba that prayer is the believer’s response to the uncertainties of life. Through it, the person can ground their existence in the One who can truly provide firmness against the fluctuations of this world: God. The Bishop of Hippo also warns of the danger of placing hope in the passing goods of the earth. Prayer, on the contrary, invites us to hope for everything from God, opening the heart with confidence to a close encounter with the Lord.
Furthermore, prayer helps us to use the goods of this world with wisdom. Human beings were not created to settle permanently on this earth, as if it were their permanent residence, but to live as pilgrims on the way to the City of God. Prayer raises the believer’s gaze and reminds them that their destiny does not end in this life, but culminates in eternal communion with God. Therefore, we must learn to pray from our own fragility, lifting our hearts toward eternal goods and placing all our hope in them.
2. What should we ask for when we pray?
In this letter, Saint Augustine recalls one of the works that most influenced his youth: Cicero’s Hortensius. In it, he had discovered a fundamental truth: all human beings seek happiness. The Christian, too, when praying, asks God for a happy life, an existence in which health, friendship, and the necessary goods for living are not lacking.
However, Saint Augustine understands that these goods, while legitimate and necessary, belong only to our condition as pilgrims in this world and do not constitute the ultimate end of human existence. For this reason, he insists that the main petition of prayer must be the gift of perseverance: remaining faithful to God every day to reach the true life, the full and eternal happiness that consists in living forever with Him in the Kingdom of Heaven.
It is not wrong to ask for material goods, as they are also part of the needs of the present life. What is important is that our prayer does not stop at them, but rises toward the Supreme Good, which is God Himself. Asking for the gift of perseverance to reach eternal life is, for Saint Augustine, the most important petition that can spring from the heart of the believer.
3. How to pray always: the desire for God is never extinguished
Saint Augustine, like the other Church Fathers, addresses one of the great questions posed by Saint Paul when he exhorts the Christians of Thessalonica: “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17). How is it possible to fulfill this command?
Saint Augustine’s answer is profoundly simple and, at the same time, of enormous spiritual richness: one prays without interruption when the heart remains inhabited by a constant desire for God. Whoever continually longs for the Kingdom of Heaven and rests inwardly in hope in God never stops praying, even while occupied with daily tasks.
That is why he invites the believer to keep alive throughout their entire life a holy desire for God, a desire that constantly reminds them of their condition as a pilgrim and prevents them from being seduced by the passing goods of this world to the point of forgetting eternal goods.
To nourish that desire, Saint Augustine recalls the practice of the monks of Egypt, who frequently repeated brief prayers full of fervor and affection. These are called aspirations: simple but intense prayers that keep the memory of God alive amidst work and daily occupations. These brief invocations renew the desire for the Kingdom and prevent the heart from growing cold or becoming distracted among the concerns of material life.
4. The Lord’s Prayer: the prayer Jesus taught according to Saint Augustine
A commentary on the Lord’s Prayer could not be missing from a writing dedicated to prayer. Saint Augustine dedicated numerous pages to explaining the prayer taught by Christ and, in this letter, offers a synthesis of his main teachings.
The Bishop of Hippo invites us to pray the Lord’s Prayer with attention, recollection, and affection, so that each of its petitions transforms the life of the one who utters it. It is not a formula to be repeated mechanically, but a school where the heart learns to address God with filial confidence.
On this point, Saint Augustine also places himself within the great tradition of the Church of North Africa. A century earlier, Saint Cyprian had written a famous treatise on the Lord’s Prayer that exerted a notable influence on Augustinian thought.
The Lord’s Prayer teaches the believer to pray with the three theological virtues—faith, hope, and charity—and constitutes the most perfect summary of everything we should ask of God. It is, therefore, the prayer par excellence and the model for all Christian prayer.
5. When God seems not to answer our prayers
Saint Augustine is fully aware that, at times, God does not grant what we ask for. However, this does not mean that He remains indifferent to our prayer or that He stops listening to it. The Bishop of Hippo is convinced that God never denies what we truly need to reach eternal salvation.
Frequently, what we consider essential for our present life does not coincide with what God, in His wisdom and Fatherly love, knows is truly best for us. Therefore, when a petition seems to go unanswered, Saint Augustine invites us not to lose trust. Our prayer has been heard, even if God’s response does not coincide with our desires or expectations.
Sometimes we ask with a faith that is still immature; other times, what we request could lead us away from the greater good that God wants to give us. In any case, the believer is called to abandon themselves with serenity into the hands of the Father, convinced that He never stops caring for His children.
In this way, Saint Augustine presents two inseparable attitudes in the life of prayer: absolute trust in the goodness of God and the patient perseverance of the believer. Whoever remains faithful in prayer ends up discovering that God always responds, although He often does so in a way different from what we had imagined.
