In the year 2024, Father Fabian Martin Gomez, published in Editorial Augustinus the book “Steps that transform the heart”, with which he prolongs the theme that two years earlier he began on the centrality of the affective world in spirituality, with his work “Beats of the restless heart”. Both titles indicate that we are walking along the hidden paths of Augustinian interiority.
The work we are commenting on tries to make explicit the different itineraries of spiritual growth that St. Augustine offers in different works. Specifically, it describes the steps of spiritual ascent that the saint of Hippo proposes in works such as “On the Dimension of the Soul”, in “Genesis against the Manichaeans I and II”, in the book “On True Religion”, in the commentary “On Psalm 11″, and in the tasty booklet “On the Sermon of the Lord on the Mount”. Also the work “Confessions” is fertile ground for distinguishing pilgrimage routes that appear as programs of spiritual growth leading to the new life in Christ.
On many occasions, the steps of spiritual ascent proposed by the saint turn out to be for us unpublished proposals, aspects of his theology that are not very well known in the dissemination of Augustinian thought today, which is why the work we are reviewing appears as a novel intellectual investigation. We should not think that these indicators of the spiritual itinerary are always concise and gradual “tips”, but rather, each step of the project of spiritual growth is presented by Augustine in a broader framework of theological concepts. Thus we understand that among the indicators of this project appear very diverse elements such as sensation, art, contemplation, the ages of the old man and the new man, humility, the Scriptures, the contemplation of the
truth… We could say that the great theological wealth of Augustine is presented here as a crisscrossed map of paths along which we are invited to advance, following in the footsteps of that pilgrim of truth and expert seeker of God. Walking with this spiritual guide, we know that our steps are the affections, that the interior man climbs with the heart, that interiority is the seat of transforming relationships, that “our rest is our place”, that love is the energy and the reason of the Christian traveler, that affection is the substance for dialogue with God, that love moves, but we must choose what we love, and that therefore a path of learning true love is necessary. That path is interiority, inhabited interiority, transcended interiority 
. Thus we understand that the pilgrim’s itinerary is a path to climb with the heart, a process described by the Bishop of Hippo as a journey to the center of life, to the deepest part of oneself, to the sanctuary of one’s own conscience.
This work is an invitation to walk the path of Christian life with the heart in hand, that is to say, looking closely and 
following the compass that Augustine offers in his works for the pilgrimage towards the Homeland. Undoubtedly, it is a work that discovers the Augustinian theological route most appropriate for a gradual and programmed growth of the Christian who wishes to lead his existence towards a new life in Christ.
In this Holy Year, in which we are all invited to be pilgrims in hope, this work of Friar Fabian is given to us as a vade mecum to climb the steps of the Jubilee Christian pilgrimage. I see, in addition, 
another great enriching virtuality; in fact, this work that we are commenting on appears almost at the same time as the encyclical “Dilexit nos”, in which Pope Francis speaks about the human and divine love of the heart of Jesus Christ. And that is precisely what these pages are about, which are steps that transform the heart. Congratulations, Fabian, for this work, a guide for travelers.