What is restless heart?

Augustine of Hippo, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

Augustine of Hippo answers

The restless heart is the condition of every soul that has not yet found its proper rest — which is to say, the condition of nearly every soul in every age. I wrote it once, and it is the truest sentence I know: cor nostrum inquietum est donec requiescat in Te — our heart is restless until it rests in Thee.1 But what does this mean, precisely?

The soul was made for God, and because it was made for Him, nothing else can finally satisfy it. When I call upon my God, I am already in a kind of paradox: where is there in me a place into which He can come, since He who made heaven and earth cannot be contained — and yet, I could not exist at all unless He were already in me?2 The restlessness is not the absence of God from the soul; it is the soul's wandering away from the God who never departs from it.

This is why the restless heart cannot be cured by accumulating the things it loves. If bodies please you, if souls please you — these are not nothing, they are creatures of the good God. But love them in Him, turn the love back toward their Creator; for loved apart from Him, they will pass and pass away, and the soul that clings to them will be embittered, because whatever comes from God is unjustly loved when He is forsaken for it.3

The heart that seeks rest in created things is seeking a blessed life in the land of death — it is not there. The cure is return. Christ descended precisely for this: He ran crying aloud by words, deeds, death, life, descent, ascension — all of it a summons back to the heart, where He waits.4 The restless heart becomes still not by ceasing to love, but by at last loving rightly, loving the source from which all lovable things flow.

Sources

  1. cor nostrum inquietum est donec requiescat in Te," by translating: "our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee." It is the finest sentence in the whole book, and furnishes one of the best arguments for Christianity as the only religion which leads to that rest in God.
    The Confessions of Saint Augustine, pp. 1551–1552
  2. And what place is there in me into which my God can come--into which God can come, even He who made heaven and earth?... I could not therefore exist, could not exist at all, O my God, unless Thou wert in me.
    The Confessions of Saint Augustine, pp. 1551–1552
  3. In Him, then, let them be beloved... because whatsoever cometh from Him is unjustly loved if He be forsaken for it.
    The Confessions of Saint Augustine, pp. 1634–1635
  4. But our very Life descended hither, and bore our death, and slew it, out of the abundance of His own life; and thundering He called loudly to us to return hence to Him... crying aloud to us to return to Him. And He departed from our sight, that we might return to our heart, and there find Him.
    The Confessions of Saint Augustine, pp. 1634–1635