Return to the Heart

As the Church enters the season of Lent, we are invited once again to “rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the Lord” (Joel 2:13). What better spiritual guide to accompany us on this journey than St. Augustine of Hippo, whose Confessions remain one of the most enduring reflections on the human heart and its longing for God. How fitting, too, that we now have an Augustinian pope—Pope Leo XIV—to remind us that Augustine’s wisdom is not only historic, but timely in today’s world.

 “He is most intimately present to the human heart, but the heart has strayed from him. Return to your heart, then, you wrongdoers, and hold fast to him who made you” (Augustine, Confessions 4.12).

Augustine defines the heart in a specific way. The heart—cor in Latin—is more than an organ essential for life; it encompasses the whole of a person—our emotions, mind, will, and memory. While society often reduces the heart to feelings or passions, Augustine understood it as the deepest place of encounter between God and the human person.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church speaks of the heart as a dwelling place “to which [we] withdraw” or a “hidden center” (CCC 2563). What the Catechism describes as a “withdrawal,” Augustine refers to as a “return.”

Lent is precisely this movement: a return to the heart, where God already dwells and waits for us.  St. John Henry Newman’s motto, Cor ad cor loquitur—“Heart speaks to heart”—captures this goal beautifully: it is only through the heart that we enter into intimate, loving dialogue with the Lord. When we withdraw, or return, to our center, we encounter communion with our loving God. Returning to the heart is indeed a return to ourselves and God—a reintegration of self and reconciliation with God. It is through this theology of the heart that we can consider three key spiritual concepts: returning inward through recollection, downward in humility and repentance; and upward through contemplation.

To do that, let’s look at St. Augustine’s Confessions, which is not a typical autobiography, but more of a prayerful dialogue with God. Despite its name, this collection of writings is not a confession of sins throughout his life, but rather a “confession” of God’s mercy and love.

The unquiet heart

One of St. Augustine’s most famous lines captures the human condition: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is unquiet until it rests in you.” This translation from the original Latin by Sr. Maria Boulding may be different than the one more commonly heard, as it uses “unquiet” rather than “restless.” Augustine was a great wordsmith, so this more accurate translation is important. Augustine is not simply describing busyness or dissatisfaction, but a deeper interior noise—a spiritual dissonance that arises when the heart is divided or distant from God. Life’s distractions, both external and internal, can make this “unquiet” more familiar than ever.

A distracted heart

In today’s world, media is within reach 24/7. It grabs our attention, influences our habits, and can isolate as well as distract. When our discipline is weak and our media access is unbridled, our hearts can become numb. We hear time and time again that an overuse of media is bad for our spiritual and mental health. However, that doesn’t mean that media is without good. God can and does work through digital storytelling to teach, inspire, and communicate the Gospel. The question is not whether to let media into our lives, it’s how to intentionally integrate it with our faith.

Lent invites us to step back from the noise and examine what truly forms us. In a culture of screens, this season calls us to be honest: Does what I consume lead me toward truth, hope, and human dignity? Or does it pull me away from prayer, presence, and communion with God and others?

A media fast—or a thoughtful limitation—offers us a meaningful opportunity to live with more intentionality. By setting aside the platforms or content that demand our attention, we create space for silence, prayer, and a deeper awareness of God’s presence. The purpose of such a fast is not rejection, but renewal. It invites Christ into our daily habits, changing the way we live and reordering our relationship with God, ourselves, and the world around us. By freeing ourselves from unhealthy attachments, we can more fully open our hearts to God’s grace. 

A recollected heart

In his writings, St. Augustine also gives special attention to memory, which plays a central role in his conversion. Our faith itself is rooted in remembrance—of God’s saving acts proclaimed in Scripture and re-presented in the liturgy. For Augustine, memory is not passive recall, but a living faculty that nourishes hope, orders our loves, and shapes our desires. It reminds us of who God has been for us and who He promises to be.

Too often, we fail to linger in the moments that can change us. We may be moved by the readings at Mass but forget our reflection by the time we get home. St. Augustine warns against this kind of spiritual consumption without digestion. Quoting Proverbs, he writes: “A desirable treasure finds rest in the mouth of the wise man, but a fool swallows it” (Prov. 21:20, Vetus Latina). Wisdom requires savoring—remaining with what God is doing long enough for it to take root. The more we can savor, the more we can receive.

Memories, St. Augustine teaches, have the power to bear fruit beyond the moment itself. We can return to those graces over and over again. Even painful memories—marked by sin, shame, or loss—can be healed when revisited in God’s presence. Healing even a single memory can reframe how we understand ourselves, our past, and our relationship with God. The memories we choose to dwell on shape the story we tell ourselves about who we are. A recollected heart allows God to reorder that story according to His truth.

The heart as a battleground

Scripture consistently points to the heart as the center of desire and decision—the place where we “do business” with God. As the Catechism reminds us, “The heart is the place of decision… the place of encounter… the place of covenant” (CCC 2563). It is in the heart that we choose whom we will love and whom we will serve. For this reason, the Bible presents the heart as a battleground of grace: from Pharaoh’s hardened heart to the psalmist’s plea, “Create in me a clean heart, O God.” Even the prophet Joel calls not for an outward display, but for an interior return: “Return to me with your whole heart, fasting, weeping, and mourning” (Joel 2:12).

We must remember the deeper purpose for our Lenten practices. Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are not meant to be external checkboxes or seasonal to dos. They are meant to express an interior reality: a true repentance that pierces the heart. Our external works of penance only bear fruit when they are accompanied by an interior desire to return to the Lord.

The Catechism describes interior repentance as “a radical reorientation of our whole life, a return, a conversion to God with all our heart… with the desire and resolution to change one’s life, with hope in God’s mercy and trust in the help of his grace” (CCC 1431). Lent, then, is the season for honest examination. It is the time to ask difficult but necessary questions: Why do I do what I do? What do I truly love? What must I surrender?
St. Augustine knew this struggle well. Reflecting on his own turning point, he writes with striking clarity: “At once, every vain hope became worthless to me, and with a hot-burning desire I longed for immortality in wisdom and began now to rise upward, so that I might return to you” (Confessions, III.4). 

Augustine’s conversion did not begin with perfect behavior, but with a renewed heart, awakened to desire only God Himself. And our Lord, who never abandons us, waits for our return to heart, where He already dwells. May this Lent be for us, as we’ve learned from St. Augustine, a true return to the heart. “When at last I cling to you with my whole being,” he writes, “there will be no more anguish or labor for me, and my life will be alive indeed, because [it’s] filled with you” (Confessions, 10.28).