And he departed from our sight that we might return to our heart, and there find Him. For He departed, and behold, He is here.

The quote turns the Ascension into a spiritual pedagogy. Christ “departs from our sight” so that believers stop clinging to what can be grasped by the senses and instead “return to our heart,” the Augustinian center of selfhood where God is encountered. The apparent absence is therefore a form of presence: Christ is not confined to a visible body located “over there,” but is accessible “here” through interior conversion, faith, and love. The passage encapsulates Augustine’s broader theme that God is closer to us than we are to ourselves, and that the journey to God is, in a decisive sense, an inward return.