What is affective spirituality?

In St Augustine's *Confessions* (Book X, Chapter 27) we read: > Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved You. And see, You were within and I was in the external world and sought You there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which You made. You were with me, and I was not with You. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in you, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, You put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after You. I tasted You, and I feel but hunger and thirst for You. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is Yours. > > Edition used: [Saint Augustine Confessions: A new translation by Henry Chadwick](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199537828) (1991, Reissued as Oxford World's Classics Paperbacks in 1998). I know that some people can't read it without feeling like crying. This text doesn't move me at all. I just don't understand it. I have heard about the term "affective spirituality" and that St Augustine represented one version of it. Fr. John Hardon's [*Modern Catholic Dictionary* entry on "Affections"](https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/dictionary/index.cfm?id=31692&randomterm=false) says: > A broad variety of human sentiments that are distinguished from strictly mental or cognitive experiences. Affections pertain to the will, desires, and feelings, i.e., the outgoing activities. In the spiritual life they are identified with those movements of the soul that reach out to God and with the invisible world of angels and saints. Affections are acts of the infused virtues of hope and charity. (Etym. Latin *affectus*, condition, situation; affectionate state or inclination; faculty of desire.) This definition mentions feelings, so perhaps this kind of spirituality has a lot to do with them. It could also mean that it focuses a lot more on feeling than on thinking, instead of giving them equal importance. **What is affective spirituality?**