Augustine of Hippo
354–430
Feast: August 28
You are not someone who settles for fine-sounding words, your mind will not rest until it has found the truth. Augustine is exactly like that: a young man who tastes everything life has to offer, the wild years, the career, the great search. His mother Monica refuses to give up on him and prays for her son for seventeen years. Then, in a garden, he hears a child's voice: "Tolle, lege, take up and read!" He opens the Scriptures, and the restless seeker becomes the Bishop of Hippo, the greatest thinker of the West, a conversion that changes the course of history. His most famous line was true of him first: "Our heart is restless until it rests in You", and yours: where does it rest?
From his life
- a wild early life
- his mother Monica prays for 17 years
- the "Tolle, lege" scene
- bishop and the greatest thinker of the West
„Unruhig ist unser Herz, bis es ruht in Dir.“
Source: Confessiones I,1
The bridge to tradition
His Confessions are the most honest book of antiquity, the tradition has been reading him for 1,600 years.