How I cried out to you, my God, when I read the Psalms of David, those hymns of faith, those songs of a pious heart in which the spirit of pride can find no place! I was new to your true love. I was a catechumen living at leisure in that country house with Alypius, a catechumen like myself, and my mother, who never left us. She had the weak body of a woman but the strong faith of a man, the composure of her years, a mother’s love for her son, and the devotion of a Christian. How I cried out to you when I read those Psalms! How they set me on fire with love of you!
–Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin, 186
