Thurs, Week 21 OT – I St. Augustine August 28, 2025
Fr. Alexander Albert St. Mary Magdalen, Abbeville
“What are you looking for?” Sometimes in confession, I ask that question of the person confessing. Especially when their sins seem to involve chasing thrills or pleasures, I want them to reflect on what they thought they would get our of committing those particular sins. Today is the memorial of St. Augustine, one of the greatest saints of the Church and one of the most significant figures of human history. Why is he so great? Because he went looking, seeking, searching and he left us a pretty detailed account of that search. Not only that, but he found what he was looking for. Still, one of the reasons St. Augustine is so widely loved is because before he was a saint, he was a mess, a rebel, a know-it-all, a sinner.
Augustine was from a well-off family in northern Africa. His mother was Catholic, but his dad was a pagan. Once as a young man, Augustine trespassed onto his neighbor’s land to steal a pear from their orchard. He had his own pear trees with better pears. But he stole one anyway. Why? For the sheer delight of being bad, it was a literal example of wanting the “forbidden fruit.” Despite being a brilliant student, he refused to learn Greek because the teacher was mean and he preferred to prove his independence.
As he got older, he not only rejected the Christian faith of his mother, he joined a cult called the “Manichaeans.” They were a splinter off of Christianity that believed the body was evil and a prison for the soul. St. Augustine also lived with a woman out of wedlock and even had a child with her. He chased women and wealth and fame. He just kept looking. But he never seemed to find what he was looking for.
Eventually, however, his brilliance and his constant searching got him to the point where he realized how dumb the cult he joined actually was. Their ideas were weak and their leaders were hypocrites. Then he ran into St. Ambrose. St. Ambrose was brilliant, but he was also a faithful bishop. They became friends and eventually Augustine realized that maybe Catholicism had something worth listening to after all.
Now, in a lot of saint stories, you get the part where the sinner has this big conversion and starts living like a saint from then on out. Not so with St. Augustine! It was a long struggle. He wrestled with the truth. He struggled to stop chasing women and practice chastity. He once prayed to God and said “Lord, make me chaste, but not yet.”
One day he was in a garden talking with some friends about Christianity. He was struggling with the idea until he heard children singing. They were singing “tolle lege.” That’s Latin for “take and read.” Augustine later realized that the voices he heard singing were not children, but angels in disguise and the song was a sign from God. So St. Augustine opened the bible to Romans 13 and read “let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day… put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the desires of the flesh.”
Eventually, Augustine did just that. He grew in virtue, got better at prayer, and put his brilliant mind to work in understanding and teaching others about the Catholic faith. His search didn’t stop there, however. Now that he found the right path, he wasn’t done. He was just getting started. St. Augustine wrote a lot of books – over a hundred books and over 5 million words.
One time, while he was trying to write a book about the Trinity, Augustine was walking along a beach thinking about what to write when he saw a child playing in the ocean. The child had dug a hole in the sand and was carrying one cup of water at time from the ocean to pour into the hole. He asked the boy what he was doing and the child said “I’m trying to put the whole ocean into this hole.” St. Augustine chuckled and said, “you can’t possibly fit the ocean into that hole.” Then the boy looked him straight in the eye and said “and neither can you fit the Trinity into your human understanding,” then vanished.
That was the second time God used angels disguised as children to help him find what he was looking for. The partying, the money, the women, the fame, the pride of being smarter than other people, that stolen pear from his neighbor… all of these things were Augustine’s attempt to find the happiness that can only be found in God. And once he found him, it was like trying to fit an ocean into a tiny hole – Augustine never ran out of things to discover and love about God.
Among his millions of words, Augustine wrote this line, “our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” St. Augustine has a lot of great quotes, but that one is a real contender for the best and most famous one because it cuts to the heart of the matter, pun definitely intended.
St. Paul in our first reading offered this prayer: “may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we have for you, so as to strengthen your hearts, to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father.” Do you see what that prayer is asking for? That we love each other so as to strengthen our hearts.” Love of God and neighbor makes our hearts stronger.
After half a lifetime of living a selfish life seeking his own satisfaction, Augustine’s encounter with God caused him to spend the rest of his life as a priest and bishop serving other people, loving them, and trying to help them find God. He became what Jesus describes in the Gospel as “the faithful and prudent servant, whom the master has put in charge of his household to distribute to them their food at the proper time.” That food was love and truth and wisdom.
What are you looking for? In your selfishness, in your sins of excess and pleasure, in your rebelliousness, in those moments you do the wrong thing because it’s wrong and because you enjoy the wrongness… what are you looking for? Happiness? Meaning? Love?
I’ll tell you what you’re looking for: a place for your heart to rest. Our hearts are weak, but they are also restless and not easily satisfied. So we try to rest in whatever feels good. But it doesn’t work. Only in God can they find rest. And in case you think “rest” sounds boring, as if finding God means no more adventure, look again at the second half of St. Augustine’s life. He “rested” in God in the same way a marathon runner “rests” in finding the right rhythm to run with. The rest God offers our hearts is not passive, idle, or boring. It is the strength to be what we’re made to be, the strength to find peace in a broken world and strength to be able to love and be loved for all eternity.
So yeah, what are you looking for? And while you search for it, let me offer this final practical point as a place to start: God used the voice of a singing child to help Augustine find what he was looking for. If you’re bored at Mass and looking for something more interesting than standing there silently and waiting for it to be over… try being that singing child.