Need a guide for deeper prayer? Pope Leo recommends a letter by St. Augustine
Pope Leo XIV recommended a specific letter by St. Augustine as a valuable resource for deepening one's prayer life. The recommendation was shared by the Pope during an interview with OSV News while traveling on the papal plane to Algeria. The discussion highlighted the Pope's personal spiritual reading preferences during his historic visit to the country.
6 months ago
Pope Leo XIV, on his 2026 papal flight to Algeria, urged Catholics to read St. Augustine’s Letter 130 to Proba as a guide for deeper prayer, emphasizing that authentic prayer is rooted in longing for God rather than eloquent words. Both reports detail the letter’s key teachings, link them to Leo’s Augustinian spirituality, and place the recommendation within his historic pilgrimage through North Africa. 1 2
Explore Augustine’s letters as models of authentic Catholic prayer
Augustine’s letters show prayer not as an escape from the world, but as a real, ecclesial dialogue with God—Christ-centered, grace-dependent, and expressed with humility, perseverance, and intercession. When read this way, they become usable “models” of authentic Catholic prayer rather than merely historical documents.
A first Catholic test for any prayer practice is whether it treats God as a living Person whom we truly address. Pope Francis warns against the temptation to turn prayer into something magical—“prayer is not a magic wand: it is a dialogue with the Lord.” In Augustine’s letters, that dialogical character appears in the tone and structure: he speaks to God (directly or implicitly through a request for others to pray), and he also treats prayer as something that must be received in faith and humility, not commanded as a mechanism.
That humility is also visible in how Augustine frames himself before God and others. In Letter 231, when sharing his Confessions with Darius, Augustine does not seek self-exaltation; he redirects praise beyond himself: “join me, because of it, in praising Him to whom, and not to myself, I desire praise to be given.” A prayer model emerges here: authentic prayer refuses self-referential spirituality and instead turns the heart toward God’s action.
Moreover, Augustine’s prayer is not isolated. The Catechism notes that true prayer is marked by “concern for ecclesial communion” and that prayer groups are “schools of prayer” when they “drink from authentic wellsprings of Christian prayer.” Augustine’s letter-practice—especially his repeated “pray for us”—already functions like a school of prayer for a whole ecclesial network.
The Catechism presents the Holy Spirit as the living source of prayer: “The Holy Spirit is the living water ‘welling up to eternal life’ in the heart that prays,” teaching us to accept “it at its source: Christ.” It then names key wellsprings: the Word of God, the liturgy, and the theological virtues (faith, hope, charity).
Augustine’s letters align with these wellsprings in multiple ways:
In Letter 130, Augustine replies to Proba regarding prayer and immediately connects prayer to persistent, embodied fidelity: “continue in supplications night and day.” This is not theoretical spirituality; it is prayer as a practiced pattern inside ordinary life.
Romanus Cessario, reflecting on Christian prayer’s theological character, highlights that true prayer belongs to the virtue of religion: it expresses loving submission and is a “reasonable exchange of words” with God. Augustine’s letter-prayer consistently looks like that: it is rational, purposeful, and obedient—not a mood, not a fantasy, but a real turning of the will to God.
If Augustine’s letters are models, a crucial reason is that they are Christological. Pope John Paul II’s synthesis of Augustine’s spiritual teaching makes this point directly. Augustine teaches that prayer’s deepest source is Christ’s own priestly and headship mediation: “He prays for us, and prays in us, and is prayed to by us. He prays for us as our priest; He prays in us, as our head; He is prayed to by us, as our God. Let us therefore recognize our voices in him, and his voice in us.”
That statement supplies a way to read Augustine’s letters prayerfully: when Augustine asks others to pray for him, he is not merely mobilizing social support; he is participating in Christ’s own continuing prayer for the Church.
This Christ-centeredness is also consistent with what the Church teaches about prayer’s Trinitarian character. The Catechism notes that even prayer lived “in secret” is “always prayer of the Church; it is a communion with the Holy Trinity.”
Finally, Benedict XVI’s catechesis quoting Cyprian underscores prayer’s intimacy and dependence on Christ: it is “a trusting and intimate prayer to beseech God with his own word, to raise to his ears the prayer of Christ,” so that the Father acknowledges the Son’s words and “himself dwell in our voice.” Augustine’s letters—filled with petitions and requests—fit that same logic: we pray by being drawn into Christ’s own prayer.
Augustine’s most visible letter-model of prayer is intercession. In Letter 41, Augustine and Alypius ask Aurelius to pray for them. They value those prayers because the supplicant “go[es] to God with so great an offering of unfeigned love, and of praise brought to Him by your works.” Then Augustine adds a communal petition: “Pray that in us also these works may shine.”
Intercession here has three authentic-Catholic features:
Pope Francis explicitly connects intercession to the Church’s missionary vitality: “One form of prayer moves us particularly…: it is the prayer of intercession.” He even notes that intercessory prayer doesn’t contradict contemplation: “authentic contemplation always has a place for others.” Augustine’s letters concretely show this: contemplation and pastoral concern do not compete. They feed each other.
Augustine’s letter-prayer also models an anti-Pelagian, grace-dependent posture. In Letter 145, Augustine addresses those who suggest that, once the law is given, the will is strong enough by itself to fulfill it. Augustine argues that their position has a practical consequence: it undermines the duty to pray—specifically, the Lord’s petition: “lead us not into temptation.”
He makes the logic explicit: if fulfillment were wholly in human power, the command “Watch and pray, that you enter not into temptation” would be oddly unnecessary; likewise the petition “lead us not into temptation” would not require divine help. Augustine’s conclusion is clear: full consent of the will “can never be in him unless he is healed and assisted by the grace of the Spirit.”
So Augustine’s letter model is not only “pray a lot,” but pray rightly—with theological realism. Prayer is not an ornament on morality; it is a confession that we need God’s healing grace. This is directly aligned with the broader Catholic prayer vision in the Catechism: the Holy Spirit “teaches us to accept it at its source: Christ,” and prayer is a “wellspring” from above rather than self-generated empowerment.
Even Augustine’s insistence that others pray for him in Letter 231 fits this grace logic: “pray for me that I may not fail, but be perfected.” He asks for prayer precisely because his spiritual life still depends on God’s action transforming him.
A final distinctive feature of Augustine’s prayer teaching (as presented by John Paul II) is that prayer is not only words but desire. Augustine identifies prayer with interior orientation: “Your desire is itself your prayer; and if your desire is continuous, then your prayer too is continuous.” That makes Augustine’s letters a kind of spiritual pedagogy: even when the immediate act is writing, the spiritual substance is desire before God—desire for holiness, for perseverance, for others, for the Church.
This also explains why Augustine’s letters repeatedly return to petitions. In Letter 231, he does not merely thank Darius; he presses the request: “Pray, my son; pray. I feel what I say; I know what I ask.” The model is unmistakable: Augustine prays with truthfulness about what he needs and what God must do.
John Paul II also emphasizes Augustine’s social dimension of prayer: he argues for praying so that those not yet called may be called—prayer’s “social usefulness.” Augustine’s letters show the same dynamic: prayer does not stay locked in the individual; it extends to the Church’s mission and growth.
If you want Augustine’s letters to become models for authentic Catholic prayer, you can draw a set of concrete principles from them:
Augustine’s letters model authentic Catholic prayer because they are simultaneously Trinitarian and ecclesial, Christ-centered, grace-dependent, and intercessory. They warn against transforming prayer into magic (a relationship with God, not a tool), while also showing that prayer is not vague emotion: it is the structured turning of heart—often voiced as petitions—drawn from Scripture and sustained by the Holy Spirit in communion with the Church.