AUGUSTINIAN VICARIATE OF THE ORIENT
PROVINCE OF THE MOST HOLY NAME OF JESUS IN THE PHILIPPINES
COMMUNITY LIFE
V O C A T I O N S
Pre-Nov. Nico James Fetizanan Fabrero
Seminario San Agustin
Intramuros, Manila
COMMUNION OF RESTLESS HEARTS
“You have made us for yourself,
O Lord, and our heart is restless
Until it rests in you.”
St. Augustine, Confessions
In our world today, marked with cataclysms and moral confusions that impinge upon our personal relationship with God, many of us may have been asking too much “Whys” and “Hows” in their lives and fall away to God because of false resentments. Left prostrate by predicament, we remain restless.
Unceasingly, we seek for the meaning of life as much as St. Augustine sought for the truth. The restlessness of St. Augustine might have been the same restlessness that we now feel. But, in fact, the world is in dire need of restless hearts.
As St. Augustine put it, “. . . our heart is restless until it rests in you”, the word “restless” opens up a wonderful perspective on spiritual path. The restless heart can never find satisfaction until it finds the perfect love of God.
The Augustinian community is a communion of restless hearts; a communion of hearts with selfless intensity. It is the summit of our charism; to live our lives with “one mind and one heart intent upon God.”
If we ever try to take a look at life a little closer, we would find that our own
sufferings and restlessness were brought about by our own materialistic pursuits. It is not the kind of restlessness which seeks for a peaceful rest but an arid heart instead. Jesus said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you.”
These things are, in fact, not the things that we obtain and discard. We seek here and there, but it will never satisfy our hearts completely. They are absolutely the things without which our hearts are never satisfied. And, until we find them, we live in a state of continual restlessness.