Augustine of Hippo

Augustine of Hippo was a brilliant, restless African — teacher of rhetoric, seeker of truth, lover of many things — who tried philosophy and pleasure and ambition before grace finally found him. His Confessions, the first true autobiography, is one long prayer addressed to God.

His genius is interiority: he discovered that God is not far off but “more inward to me than my innermost self.” The seeking that drove him everywhere was, all along, a homing instinct for the One already within.

From him the whole Western tradition learned to read its own heart before God — its desires, its memory, its restlessness — and to name that restlessness as the beginning of prayer.