St Augustine of Hippo

On Friday this week we celebrate the Feast of St Augustine of Hippo. He was born in Thagaste, in Africa, of a Berber family in 354. Although brought up a Christian, he left the Church early and spent a great deal of time seriously seeking the truth, first in the Manichaean heresy (which he abandoned on seeing how nonsensical it was) and then in Neoplatonism. At length, through the prayers of his mother St Monica and the teaching of St Ambrose of Milan, he was converted back to Christianity and baptised in 387, shortly before his mother’s death.

One of his best known books was the Confessions, which he wrote soon after he became bishop — in order (he tells us) ‘to stir up the human intellect and affections into God’. Peter Kreeft, in his book on St Augustine, writes:

‘Confessions has been the single most read, reread, and quoted post-Biblical Christian book ever written. On its very first page is the single most quoted post-Biblical Christian sentence ever written, and that sentence is its central theme and the main thing Augustine is “confessing” – that “Thou hast made us for Thyself and [therefore] our hearts are restless till they rest in Thee.” The Confessions is simply the Gospel; it is the Gospel of the restless heart.’

When Pope Leo XIV was elected, on May 8 2025, in his very first greeting he described himself as a ‘son of St. Augustine’. He has belonged to the Order of St. Augustine since September 2, 1978, the day he first professed vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. St. Augustine has marked every step of his journey since. His influence on Pope Leo XIV’s teaching and style is unmistakable. For example, his papal coat of arms bears the motto In Illo uno unum — ‘In the One Christ we are one’ — taken from a sermon by the Bishop of Hippo on Psalm 127. Another Augustinian mark appears in his papal emblem: the heart burning with the arrow of the Word. On the day of his election the Pope quoted St. Augustine directly: ‘”For you I am a bishop, with you, I am a Christian.”‘

Here is something for us to consider. St. Augustine wrote that our hearts are restless until they rest in God — yet most people today fill that restlessness with noise, distraction and comfort. In what area of your own life do you sense that holy restlessness? And are you running toward God with it — or away?