Restless Hearts · Week 4 · Grades 9–12
Guided Notes: St. Augustine
- Name
- Date
- Class
Follow along as your teacher presents. Fill in each section when its slide is on the screen.
Ambition without rest
Augustine was born in 354 in blank 1, in Roman North Africa, to a Christian mother, Monica, and a pagan father, Patricius. He was brilliant, and his family sacrificed to send him to study in Carthage.
There he lived for ambition and pleasure. He lived for years with a woman he did not marry, and they had a son, blank 2. He later admitted that he had prayed to become pure, “but not yet.”
He was also a serious seeker. A book by the Roman writer blank 3 set him on fire for wisdom. He spent about nine years with the Manichaeans, who promised a rational answer to the problem of evil, and left disappointed.
From Thagaste to Hippo
Write what happened at each point.
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| 354 | Write your answer |
| 383–384 | Write your answer |
| 386 | Write your answer |
| 387 | Write your answer |
| 391 | Write your answer |
| 397–400 | Write your answer |
| 410 | Write your answer |
| 430 | Write your answer |
The garden and the turn
In Milan, the preaching of blank 4 Ambrose removed Augustine’s intellectual objections to Christianity. His mind was convinced. His will was not. He knew what was true and still could not bring himself to live it.
In 386, weeping in a garden, he heard a child’s voice chanting, “Take up and read.” He opened St. Paul’s Letter to the blank 5 and read a call to put aside his old way of life and “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” He needed to read no further.
Monica, who had prayed and wept for him for years, lived to see his blank 6. Looking back, Augustine wrote, “Late have I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new.”
Apply it
A student knows an app wastes hours of her day and keeps opening it anyway. Which insight of Augustine fits best? Circle one.
- A Evil is a force equal in power to God
- B Knowing the good is not the same as willing it
- C Earthly empires never last for very long
- D Anything that gives us pleasure is sinful
Why is that the right answer?
Apply it
By “ordered loves,” what would Augustine say is wrong with living for likes and followers? Circle one.
- A Praise is a real good put in God’s place
- B Praise from others is always dishonest
- C Christians should avoid being noticed
- D Popularity was unknown in his own time
Why is that the right answer?
Take a side
Augustine wrote, “Our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Resolved: endless scrolling is not mainly a technology problem. It is the same restless heart Augustine described, and only God can settle it.
My side: ☐ Agree ☐ Disagree
- Augustine chased pleasure, applause and success without any screen. Does that prove the problem is in us?
- Apps are engineered to hold attention. How much responsibility belongs to the design rather than the user?
- If the root is spiritual, do practical limits like timers and app blockers still matter?
- Augustine said knowing the good was not enough to do it. What actually changed him?
- Can a person find real rest without God? What would Augustine say, and what do you say?
My strongest reason, with evidence from the slides:
The best argument for the other side, and my response:
Let us pray
“Put on the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Romans 13:14
Lord, you have made us for yourself.
Order our loves, heal our divided wills, and give us your grace.
Let our restless hearts find their rest in you.
St. Monica and St. Augustine, pray for us.
Amen.
My own prayer or intention:
Take up and read
Augustine spent years searching everywhere else before he rested in God. His feast day is August 28, the day after St. Monica’s.
One thing I learned today:
One question I still have:
How could the example of St. Augustine shape the way I live, online and offline?
Challenge: For seven days, each time you catch yourself scrolling out of restlessness, stop and pray one sentence: “Lord, my heart is restless until it rests in you.”