Divine Restlessness

You have made us for Yourself, oh God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.

St. Augustine of Hippo

Br. Teadale looks at this famous passage and gives us his insightful view of what this restlessness is, and what it can mean to rest in God:

“St. Augustine begins his great autobiographical book, The Confessions, with this prayer. 

Augustine knew the constitution of human nature: that ultimate happiness is only possible with God. Everything else makes us restless. Nothing can fulfill us quite like God can. 

He knew at once the destiny of the human in intimacy with the Divine as well as the weaknesses of human nature. Augustine realized that most humans are not up to the task of seeking wholehearted intimacy with God, rest in him, the rest of fulfilled contemplation.

We were made by God for God. Augustine reminds us in his evocation. He reveals the vocation of human life as a journey into the mystery of the Divine Presence. This journey grows more profound  the more we enter into a relationship with and surrender to God. This is the mystic path.”

While I could begin with a quibble about this is the mystic path, yet I know full well that the way of wholehearted surrender is a direct path, and the one the most of Christianity through its mystics recommend. 

I have found this path or this sacred way very demanding, and have preferred one that centers on the will and its surrender. Not that I balk at the necessity for a relational theology, or the importance of an intimate awareness of the sacred dimension in our lives! However, I do stumble over Augustine, and much of his subsequent writings about sin, judgment, and the penance that accompanies yet complicates any hope of redemption!

Leaving that theological garbage truck of stinky issues behind, I fully appreciate the internal restlessness that accompanies the search for the true self and for a genuine relationship to the divine. 

As I have wandered, I am reminded that the great teachers have affirmed that there is an accompanying or a “walking with” companionship dimension to grace that will comfort you. 

As I see it, it is more of a gracious “divine discontent” that compels each step in your search. It is more than any simple feeling of restlessness. I believe that it is the Holy Spirit in us, that keeps us on the move; and it is the Spirit’s intention that does not allow us to settle on comfortable plateaus or to accept easy answers that ultimately do not satisfy my quest. Either way, restless or discontent, we are not alone… 

I find myself discontent… a lot of the time! Maybe that is just an honest assessment of my life so far, that I have not arrived at any sense of a sustaining peace. While I could easily admit that I sometimes feel a “holy envy” for those who appear to have attained it, I recognize that, for me, the struggle for me is clear; to clean away any thoughts, feelings, or need for experiences; ways that could potentially frustrate the arrival of that intimacy, and so it remains a daily and ever-present challenge! The realization of peace in God remains a gracious mysterious goal…