Deacon Kurt Heinrich, who teaches theology at Dowling Catholic High School, joins the Catholic Morning Show on the Memorial of Saint Augustine to introduce one of the load-bearing pillars of Western Christianity. He traces Augustine's path from a worldly career in Rome and Milan to his baptism at thirty-three by Saint Ambrose, and explains why the great convert is inseparable from his mother, Saint Monica. Deacon Kurt reflects on the famous line about our restless hearts, shares a lesser-known image of the cross carrying us across the sea of the world, and leaves parents with a simple charge: pray and sacrifice for your children.
Deacon Kurt Heinrich — a permanent deacon of the Diocese of Des Moines and a theology teacher at Dowling Catholic High School — joins Bo Bonner on the feast of Saint Augustine to give listeners the short version of a very long life.
Augustine was born in 354 into a mixed household: a non-believing father and a devout mother. Bright and restless, he pursued the things of the world — wealth, reputation, a teaching career that carried him from his hometown to Rome and then Milan. He entered the Church at thirty-three, baptized by the Bishop of Milan, Ambrose, and what followed was an explosion of work: more than two hundred books and over a thousand sermons and letters.
Deacon Kurt's central point is that no one lives the faith in isolation. Augustine's conversion is unthinkable apart from Saint Monica, whose feast the Church kept just the day before — her prayer, her example, and her endurance through decades of watching her son chase everything else first. That communal reality, Deacon Kurt says, extends past this life to the communion of saints and the souls in purgatory, and it carries a practical word for parents today: pray for your kids, lift them up, and make small sacrifices for them regularly.
Asked about Augustine's most famous line — that our hearts are restless until they rest in God — Deacon Kurt says anyone who has chased the world already knows it is true, because everything there eventually disappoints. He also offers a lesser-known line that has stayed with him, on no one crossing the sea of the world safely unless carried by the cross of Christ, and on that cross carrying us if we do not abandon it.
For listeners intimidated by City of God or On the Trinity, Bo offers his own starting point: Augustine's Letter 130, written to Proba — a short catechism on prayer, built on the idea that God has set aside gifts our hearts are not yet large enough to receive, and that prayer is precisely what enlarges them.
Heard on the Catholic Morning Show, weekdays at 7 a.m. Central on Iowa Catholic Radio. More at IowaCatholicRadio.com.
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