Gustaui et esurio et sitio: Augustine and the Spiritual Taste

My investigation considers a certain passage from Augustine’s Confessions (10.27.38) as exegetical key allowing the revisiting of the topic of spiritual senses or senses of the heart. It aims to prove that the experience of taste can be viewed as an example of the most intimate receptivity of the human being to God, and that the natural disposition of the spiritual taste is being hungry and being thirsty of divine sweetness. Comparing this passage to other passages from Augustine’s works, I will analyse how the motif of “hunger” is used to convey the human longing for the divine presence. A wider contextualisation for the experience of hunger through the spiritual taste can be reconstructed while examining the images of spiritual nourishment.