[Scriptum compendiosum Psalterii intentionem declarans]

Third, that we similarly amputate detractions, vaniloquence, and all scurrility. Fourth, also, that the perturbation of justice is to be stripped away from the foundations. Fifth, that we tear out the vomit of carnal concupiscence from our heart by the roots, and thus, with any vices whatsoever thoroughly cut away, the first foundation of profound humility is to be laid, which may be able to sustain that such high, heaven-penetrating fervor, namely, the devotion of prayer. Then, the extruction of virtues is to be superposed, through which the mind can be restrained from all slippery wandering and may begin to be sublimated to divine contemplation and theoretical ecstasies, as if it were always being said to it: "Lift up your hearts." And whoever will have been prepared here, such a one will attain to that prayer about which the holy Anthony was saying:

"It is not, indeed, a human, but a celestial sentence; there is not," he says, "a perfect prayer in which a monk does not understand that which he prays."

Thus was that most holy matron, Blessed Monica, the mother of Saint Augustine, prepared, about whom Augustine himself writes to his sister, a consecrated virgin, that she was often filled in prayer with such intoxication of the Holy Spirit that she would rest in it for almost the entire day, while from the chamber of her heart, neither voice

nor sense was felt in her. Nor is it a wonder, because that peace which exceeds every sense was burying the living sense of her members, so that our neighbors, even pinching her, could scarcely stir her. On the day, however, of the blessed Cyprian, while this handmaid of Christ deserved to receive the sacraments of the Lord, she was almost entirely elevated in the house, shouting, for she was accustomed to be most quiet, saying: "We fly to heaven, faithful ones." When she was later asked what had happened to her, she did not respond, but she was filled with such joy that she led everyone to the feast, singing with the prophet:

"My heart and my flesh have exulted in the living God."

Also, while on a certain day the same handmaid of Christ, anticipated and visited by you, O Lord, was considering the benefits which you, incarnate, clemently showed to the human race, she arrived at such grace of compunction and such a copiousness of tears, expressed in the passion at the winepress of your cross, that her tears, flowing copiously over the pavement throughout the church, showed her footsteps. And the more she was afraid to stop the influence of tears, the more the river of tears arose. So much Augustine. To similar theories was the ecstasy of this same mother, when she was rapt together with her son Augustine.