24th December, 2022
Benignus O'Rourke, Finding Your Hidden Treasure (Darton, Longman and Todd), 64.
Image: Rui Silva SJ, Portugal, unsplash.com/s/photos/rui-silva
This short image-backed quote, above, is taken from the longer text, below, in Benignus O'Rourke's Finding Your Hidden Treasure: The Way of Silent Prayer (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2010), 63-64. You can read more about this book by clicking here.
'To spend time resting from all effort prepares us for a living encounter with the Lord. When we come to believe that God is, before all else, the one who invites us to a place of rest, then we will cease our struggling and let [God] enfold us in [God's] peace. We no longer wear ourselves out trying to find God, or trying to gain [God's] approval. Instead, we wait for [God] in silence and peace. We listen, and in the silence we hear [God's] gentle invitation to that quiet place within where [God] waits for us.
So we bring our body and mind into a state of stillness, that stillness described in Psalm 130 in which all words disappear, in which our whole being is steeped in quietness and trust:
O Lord, my heart is not proud
nor haughty are my eyes.
I have not gone after things to great
nor marvels beyond me.
Truly I have set my soul
in silence and peace.
As a child in its mother's arms
even so my soul.
O Israel, hope in the Lord
both now and forever.
This is our cue to rest in the Lord's presence as a child in its mother's arms. It is so simple, and so sensible. As we are drawn deeper into the silence all sorts of things happen. But to begin with let us first trust the silence, trust that God is at the heart of the silence. In time the silence will deepen. We do not look for anything except to find our way to the stil centre where Christ is.'