Anthropological Foundations of Mentoring

In June, the Forum hosted a Mentoring Workshop for men across the country (and beyond) to consider the whys and hows of mentoring young boys into young men into men fully alive.

It’s always best to start by defining terms. And so, the opening lecture for the workshop weekend featured Dr. Joseph Lanzilotti, theology scholar and upper school teacher at The Heights School, explicating the kind of Christian anthropology that precedes a mentoring relationship. In other words, how are we to understand what man is before we try to help him grow? For our benefit, Dr. Lanzilotti maps out this profound philosophical concept using St. Augustine’s simple and most famous line: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

Chapters:

• 2:07 St. Augustine’s “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you”
• 4:56 What is man? Who is man? What is his telos?
• 7:54 Pope St. John Paul II’s “adequate anthropology”
• 8:38 Finding an adequate anthropology in St. Augustine’s restless heart
• 10:05 Fecisti nos: you made us
• 13:33 Ad te: for yourself
• 17:27 Inquietum cor nostrum: our hearts are restless
• 22:19 Donec requiescat in te: until they rest in you

Links:

• Confessions by St. Augustine
• I Burned for Your Peace: Augustine’s Confessions Unpacked by Peter Kreeft
• Gaudium et spes by the Second Vatican Council, promulgated by Pope St. Paul VI
• The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
• Address to the Pontifical Council “Cor Unum” from January 2006 by Pope Benedict XVI
• Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis

Also on the Forum:

• Starting a Mentoring Program by Joe Cardenas and Nate Gadiano
• Mentoring without a Program: On Teaching the Whole Person featuring Joe Cardenas