Quoting Silence, August 2022:
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A post throughout each week of the month, offering quotes and resources linked to one contemporary author who writes about silence and its role as a spiritual discipline. |
In this series, some posts will use short quotations but offer links to associated resources in the text below the image-backed quote. In other weeks, the short, image-backed quote will be taken from a much more extensive quotation from the month's author, given below the image. And in the last week of the month there will be questions to encourage reflection on the month's quotations.
Quotes for each week of August will appear below in ascending date order.
Quotes for each week of August will appear below in ascending date order.
Benignus O'Rourke (1929-2019), our author for August, was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1956 but spent 25 years as an English teacher at Austin Friars School, Carlisle. In the early 1980s he joined the Augustinian community at St Mary's, Harbourne, in Birmingham, where he became the parish priest. O'Rourke's love of Augustine resulted in a new translation of the Confessions, which was published when he was 84!
Monday 1st August, 2022
Benignus O'Rourke, Finding Your Hidden Treasure: The Way of Silent Prayer
(Darton, Longman and Todd, 2010), 19.
Images: Henrique Setim, Sau Paulo, Brazil, unsplash.com/@henriquesetim
This short image-backed quote is taken from Benignus O'Rourke's book, Finding Your Hidden Treasure: The Way of Silent Prayer (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2010), 19. You can read about this book here.
Fr. Patrick Benignus O'Rourke, OSA (1929-2019) was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1956. For the next 25 years he worked as an English teacher and later as the headmaster at Austin Friars School in Carlisle. In the 1980s he joined the Augustinian Community at St Mary's, Harbourne, in Birmingham, UK, as their parish priest before moving in 1997 to take on the same role at Clare Priory, Suffolk, one of the oldest religious houses in England. Ben O'Rourke was much-loved as a gentle and wise man of prayer and known to be 'a tender counsellor of bruised souls'. Even after having moved to live in a care-home, when his Parkinson's Disease made it too difficult for him to live independently, Ben continued to have 'a ministry of phone and emails'. All his profound learning from years of encountering God in silence are offered back to us, the reader, in the 64 mini-chapters of Finding Your Hidden Treasure, which I often suggest to people as a great place to start to deepen their understanding about a practice of silence-based prayer. To read a couple of sample chapters, see here. In his funeral eulogy, from September 2019, a former pupil, whom he encouraged to be a priest wrote of this book, 'He doesn't teach you any set way to pray, no set place or time, no set words or prayers - but I open it and within a page, I put the book down: a line has inspired me to be silent in God's silence.' Its foreword was written by his great friend and fellow Augustinian, Martin Laird, our author for May, who suggests, 'If you are looking for a book that is eloquent in its simplicity, perceptive in the issues addressed, and will bring comfort in the presence of a God closer to us than we are to ourselves, Finding Your Hidden Treasure is a sure-footed guide. Those of us drawn to silent prayer will feel very much in debt to Benignus O'Rourke for producing this fine volume.' Throughout his life, O'Rourke was inspired by St Augustine's Confessions and in his mid-80s published a new translation of these (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2013), which you can read about here. An earlier book in which O'Rourke compiled writings and prayers from Augustine, Return to Your Heart: Thoughts from St. Augustine (publisher and date unknown), is now difficult to locate but can be purchased through the Augustinians, here. They also sell copies of O'ROurke's translation of Mark's Gospel, A Man Called Jesus (publisher and date unknown), which was still with printers at the time of his death. See here. beyond these sketchy details of O'ROurke's life, it is difficult to find out much about him. But another flavour of his pastoral and priestly ministry is found here in a short article, 'My atheist family was appalled when I converted to Catholicism - but it's given me great peace', by the well-known Guardian journalist, Adrian Chiles.
Monday 8th August 2022
Benignus O'Rourke, Finding Your Hidden Treasure: The Way of Silent Prayer
(Darton, Longman and Todd, 2010), 29.
(Darton, Longman and Todd, 2010), 29.
Image: Jonathan Pielmayer, Germany, unsplah.com/@jonathanpielmayer
This short image-backed quote, above, is taken from the longer quote, below, which is found in Benignus O'Rourke's Finding Your Hidden Treasure: The Way of Silent Prayer (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2010), 23, 26 and 29. You can read more about this book by clicking here.
'When Augustine writes his life story, in his Confessions, we read of a soul’s struggle to be itself. We see how his inner life, at every step, was linked with his very deep need for God. ... Augustine always sees the spiritual journey not as a going out, to find God outside, but as a journey inwards. Which is why Augustine urges us, “Wheresoever you are, wheresoever you may be praying, he who hears you is within you, hidden within.” ... If we are prepared to sit in silence and journey to the still centre of our being we shall discover that we have everything within us for our spiritual journey, and there are blessings at each step along the way. What we find on the journey will be different for each one of us. The journey may look the same, but each one’s story is unique. We each find our own truth and treasure. ... Augustine’s great discovery that within each one of us, in the depths of our hearts, lies hidden treasure changed his life and it can change ours. “How much treasure we have within us”, he declares, “but we do not dig for it!” Most of us, of course, could reply that we do not know, perhaps have never been shown, where or how to start looking for it.'
'When Augustine writes his life story, in his Confessions, we read of a soul’s struggle to be itself. We see how his inner life, at every step, was linked with his very deep need for God. ... Augustine always sees the spiritual journey not as a going out, to find God outside, but as a journey inwards. Which is why Augustine urges us, “Wheresoever you are, wheresoever you may be praying, he who hears you is within you, hidden within.” ... If we are prepared to sit in silence and journey to the still centre of our being we shall discover that we have everything within us for our spiritual journey, and there are blessings at each step along the way. What we find on the journey will be different for each one of us. The journey may look the same, but each one’s story is unique. We each find our own truth and treasure. ... Augustine’s great discovery that within each one of us, in the depths of our hearts, lies hidden treasure changed his life and it can change ours. “How much treasure we have within us”, he declares, “but we do not dig for it!” Most of us, of course, could reply that we do not know, perhaps have never been shown, where or how to start looking for it.'