Walk with Augustine of Hippo

Pastoral Theme

When You Are Restless

You have made us for Yourself, O Lord,
and our heart is restless until it rests in You.

Confessions, Book I

Augustine opens his Confessions not with his sins but with this truth: the restlessness you feel is not a flaw. It is a sign of your origin. You were made for God, and nothing less will quiet the hunger.

I became to myself a vast problem.

Confessions, Book IV

Where do you feel this restlessness most acutely? What have you tried to fill it with?

I carried about me a cut and bleeding soul,
that could not bear to be carried by me,
and where I could put it, I could not discover.

Confessions, Book IV

Not in bodily delights, not in the gleam of gold and silver,
not in purple and roses, not in the pleasures of the table,
not in games or songs—
in none of these did rest find place.

Confessions, Book IV

Pastoral Theme

When You Feel Divided

I was held fast not by another's irons,
but by my own iron will.

The enemy held my will,
and from it had made a chain
and bound me with it.

Confessions, Book VIII

Augustine knew what was good. He could not choose it. His problem was not ignorance but bondage—a will at war with itself, wanting God and wanting to remain its own master.

I do not do the good I want to do,
but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.

Romans 7:19

Grant me chastity and continence—
but not yet.

Confessions, Book VIII

What do you know is good but cannot seem to choose? Where is your will divided?

There I was, going mad on the way to sanity,
dying on the way to life.

Confessions, Book VIII

I was at strife with myself, and torn apart by myself.

Confessions, Book VIII

Pastoral Theme

When You Need to Surrender

In a garden in Milan, weeping under a fig tree, Augustine heard a child's voice.

I heard from a nearby house
a voice like a boy or girl—
I do not know which—
chanting and repeating over and over:

"Take and read. Take and read."

Confessions, Book VIII

Put on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and make no provision for the flesh.

Romans 13:14

I had no wish to read further;
there was no need.

At once, with the last words of this sentence,
it was as if a light of relief flooded into my heart.
All the shadows of doubt were dispelled.

Confessions, Book VIII

Augustine's conversion came not through more thinking, but through surrender. What would it mean for you to stop running?

Pastoral Theme

When You Seek God

Late have I loved You,
Beauty ever ancient, ever new,
late have I loved You!

You were within me,
but I was outside myself,
and there I searched for You.

Confessions, Book X

Augustine searched everywhere for God—in philosophy, in pleasure, in ambition—only to discover that God had been within him all along, waiting.

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and renew a right spirit within me.

Psalm 51:10

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 hunger and thirst for You.

You touched me,
and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is Yours.

Confessions, Book X

Where have you been searching for God outside yourself? What would it mean to turn inward?

A Prayer with Augustine

Lord, You made us for Yourself,
and we have wandered far.

Our hearts are restless—
not because we lack knowledge,
but because we lack surrender.

Heal our divided wills.
Teach us that freedom is found
not in keeping control
but in releasing it to You.

Through the intercession of your servant Augustine,
grant us the grace to stop running
and the courage to be caught.

Amen.