The Restless Heart of God

On the night of the Last Supper, the evening before His Crucifixion, Jesus revealed something astounding to His Apostles and to us. Jesus told them, and He tells each of us, “You did not choose me, but I chose you” (Jn 15:16).

We all have a longing, a yearning for God, but we must also recognize that God desires us as well.

The Desire for God

The Catechism explains, “The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for” (CCC 27). We are wired for God, and there is a God-sized hole in our heart, that nothing but the Lord can fill.

In fact, C.S. Lewis recognized this universal human experience and from it developed an argument for the existence of God based on human desire. Lewis makes the obvious connection that our desires point to their own fulfillment. He writes in his excellent book, Mere Christianity:

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger; well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim; well there is such a thing as water… If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

If we have a desire for the infinite, for everlasting happiness and fulfilment, for absolute truth, unfading beauty, and glorious perfection – these things must in fact all exist. And if infinite perfection does exist, it can only exist in one being – and it does, in God. Our desire for God – which we recognize in our desire for perfect truth, love, goodness, and beauty – points to His existence. And when we are distant from God, when we have not yet totally and fully invited the infinite God to fill the infinite void in our heart, we experience spiritual restlessness.

The Restless Heart

When our bodily desires are not properly met, we experience pain, discomfort, and unrest. Likewise, when our spiritual desires are unmet, we experience restlessness and disquiet in our soul.

St. Augustine explains this truth with the language of the “restless heart.” He describes the human heart as always yearning and longing and searching, and never truly finding rest and peace and joy – except in the Lord. Augustine writes the following in praise to God: “You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”

We need not take Augustine’s word for it; our own experiences tell us that we cannot find true fulfilment and rest in this world. How often do we turn to the finite things of this world for infinite happiness? We look to material things like money, food, alcohol, and pleasure, only to be left wanting more and never completely satisfied. Likewise, even in our pursuit of immaterial things such as success, fame, and power, there will never be enough, and we will constantly grasp for more. This is not to say we should not desire good food and pleasures, or appropriate success and power – these things simply cannot ultimately satisfy the deepest longings of our hearts. They are goods not God. When we allow them to take the place of God, they become idols.

They are the wrong piece for the God-sized hole in our hearts. They are finite in size while our heart’s void is infinite. This continual human struggle of seeking to fill the divine longing with earthly goods results in our heart’s restlessness. We grow weary with disappointment, despair at the prospect of lasting happiness, and are left wondering what will ever truly make us happy.

This restlessness is a gift from God, it is how He draws us to Himself. The Anglican poet, George Herbert, imagines restlessness as a pulley which brings us to the heart of God. He writes:

When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
“Let us,” said he, ‘pour on him all we can.
Let the world’s riches, which dispersèd lie,
Contract into a span.”

So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure.
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.

“For if I should,” said he,
“Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;
So both should losers be.

“Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness;
Let him be rich and weary, then at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast.”

Herbert describes God creating man with abundant gifts and blessings, withholding only the gift of rest – for if man had true rest along with all the other gifts of God, he would rest in the world, not the Creator of the world. So, Herbert describes God as allowing man to enjoy all the gifts of God, save the gift of rest, for in his restlessness, man is driven to search for God, where true rest may be found.

Man’s Search for God

The human being is a religious being, says the Catechism, and because of this, man will always be searching for God. Even those who deny the existence of God, or those who are indifferent to God, are in fact still religious beings, and thus will search for God, even if unknowingly. They might search for Him in the countless material and immaterial things this world has to offer: money, fame, pleasure, power, success – regardless, the insufficiency of these things to bring true rest and fulfillment point to them being ultimately inadequate.

The reason for the insufficiency of worldly things to bring us ultimate happiness is that we desire infinite happiness, and that the world and its prizes simply cannot supply this. So long as we look for infinite happiness in finite things, we will be disappointed.

In St. Augustine’s most celebrated prayer from his spiritual autobiography, The Confessions, he writes of his search for God with poetic beauty:

Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new,
late have I loved you!
Lo, you were within,
but I outside, seeking there for you,
and upon the shapely things you have made I rushed headlong,
I, misshapen.
You were within me, but I was not with you.
they held me back far from you,
those things which would have no being
were they not in you.
You called, shouted, broke through my deafness;
you flared, blazed, banished my blindness;
you lavished your fragrance, I gasped, and now I pant for you;
I tasted you, and I hunger and thirst;
you touched me, and I burned for your peace.

Augustine begins his search for God on the outside, looking for Him in the material world, not recognizing that the Lord was already within him. But by God’s grace, Augustine finally found the Lord – for in fact, the Lord was looking for him. All the while that Augustine was searching for God, the Lord was drawing him in. God is not passive in our search for Him – God is in fact the primary agent. He calls us. He draws us. He gives us the grace to know and love Him.

The Lord speaks to us in every way that He can. He calls to us from the depths of our hearts, reveals Himself in the Scriptures and on the Cross. He draws us to Him through our desires and passions. But most of all, He speaks to us in our wounds and our struggles. C.S. Lewis writes, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

It is in our wounds, our struggles, our sins, and our pains that we can most clearly hear the Lord calling to us. St. Augustine wrote, “In my deepest wound I saw Your glory, and it dazzled me.” Even in those areas of our lives where we think God is most absent, He is there beckoning to us, asking us to invite Him in. Ours is not the only restless heart – the Lord yearns for us too.

The Restless Heart of God

It is perhaps the most widely quoted and repeated line by Augustine that we have a restless heart that will only know true rest in God. It is incredibly important to also understand and proclaim the restless heart of God.

Pope Benedict XVI explained, “But not only are we restless for God: God’s heart is restless for us. God is waiting for us. He is looking for us. He knows no rest either, until he finds us. God’s heart is restless, and that is why he set out on the path towards us – to Bethlehem, to Calvary, from Jerusalem to Galilee and on to the very ends of the earth.”

The Catechism explains that prayer is the “encounter of God’s thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him” (CCC 2560). The Lord thirsts for us, He desires us, He wants us, and is restless for us. C.S. Lewis quips that speaking of man’s search for God is as silly as speaking of the mouse’s search for the cat. He is already and always looking for us. We can speak in terms of man’s search for God (I have in this article) if only we realize that God is first searching for us. When we search for Him, it is because He gives us the grace to.

The Lord desires us infinitely more than we desire Him. Salvation history is the story of God striving after His people, yearning for them, calling them to Himself. Our spiritual life begins when we recognize that God is calling us, and that His is a restless heart. Let us rest in the knowledge that we are loved, desired, and chosen by the Lord.