‘You are great, Lord, and highly to be praised (Ps. 47:2): great is your power and your wisdom is immeasurable’ (Ps. 146:5). Man, a little piece of your creation, desires to praise you, a human being ‘ bearing his mortality with him'(2 Cor. 4:10), carrying with him the witness of his sin and the witness that your ‘resist the proud’ (1 Peter 5:5). Nevertheless, to praise you is the desire of man, a little piece of your creation. Your stir man to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.

‘Grant me Lord to know and understand'( Ps. 118:34, 73, 144) which comes first– to call upon your or to praise yo, and whether knowing your precedes calling upon you. But who calls upon your when he does not know you? For an ignorant person might call upon someone else instead of the right one. But surely you may be called upon in prayer that you may be known. Yet ‘ how shall they call upon him whom they have not believed? and how shall the believe without a preacher?'(Rom. 10:14). Thy will praise the Lord who seek for him'(Ps. 21:27).

In seeking him they find him, and in finding they will praise him. Lord, I would seek you, calling upon you– and calling upon your is an act of believing in you. You have been preached to us. My faith, Lord, calls upon you. It is your gifts to me. You breathed it into me by the humanity of your Son, be the ministry of your preacher.

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Except from Saint Augustine’s Confessions p.3