Reading, prayer and cor meum in Saint Augustine

The answers to “who am I” as the way to God

Abstract

We start from the idea of purpose that St. Augustine gives to reading the sacred text and to writing his interior life in terms of autobiography and conversion and, therefore, we postulate that the act of reading leads him to seek wisdom. If this is the measure that gives coherence to his search, we must modulate its scope: reading and praying are intimately linked and are the beginning of his conversion and philosophical reflection, to the point that reading becomes prayer and the key to developing his thought. In this sense, we work on the one hand, on the “now of the heart” and, on the other, on the way in which reality exists. We will also stop to consider the characteristics of praying and thinking of “a man”; thus, St. Augustine presents his interiority and his thought through the semantic field cor and the treatment of time and memory, which leads him to reflect on the meaning of his life.