Today is August 28, the Memorial of St. Augustine, Bishop and Doctor of the Church.
We read at today’s Mass, “Now may God himself, our Father, and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you, and 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 at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones” (1 Thes 3:11-13).
On this feast of St. Augustine, we turn to one of the most beloved prayers from his “Confessions“: “Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you… You called, you shouted, and broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and dispelled my blindness.”
These words summarize Augustine’s lifelong search for truth and beauty. For years he sought satisfaction in created things, dazzled by what God had made but blind to the Creator himself. Only when grace broke through did Augustine realize that God had always been pursuing him, waiting within, calling him home.
Reordering our hearts
St. Paul’s prayer in today’s reading — that God direct our way and strengthen our hearts in holiness — matches the testimony of Augustine’s life. Conversion is not self-directed. It is God’s initiative, his persistent call, his steady love. Augustine came to see that the restless desires of his heart were answered only when reordered toward God, the true source of beauty and peace.
For Augustine, conversion was not a rejection of beauty but a discovery of beauty itself — divine beauty that purifies our loves and redirects them toward what endures. His testimony encourages us to let God reorder our hearts, so that even our desire for created things leads us to hunger and thirst for the Creator.
Today we remember Augustine as a brilliant thinker and a great bishop, but above all as a man who let himself be found by God. His witness assures us that whenever we feel far away, God is already seeking us.
Let us pray,
Renew in your Church, we pray, O Lord, that spirit with which you endowed your Bishop Saint Augustine that, filled with the same spirit, we may thirst for you, the sole fount of true wisdom, and seek you, the author of heavenly love. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
