Augustine always sees the spiritual journey not as a going out, to find God outside, but as a journey inwards. ‘He bade me shut the door of our secret chamber and pray in secret,’ he writes. ‘That is, in the soundless secret places of our hearts. For we pray to him in the silence of our hearts.’

The basis of true prayer for Augustine is the promise Jesus gave that he would live in us when he said to his disciples, ‘Make your home in me as I make mine in you.’ And after his last meal with his disciples Jesus told them: ‘I shall not leave you orphans. I shall come to you. In a short time the world will no longer see me; but you will see that I live and you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you’ (John 14:18–20).

A little later, Jesus said: ‘Anyone who loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make our home in him’ (John 14:23).

Which is why Augustine urges us: ‘Wheresoever you are, wheresoever you may be praying, he who hears you is within you, hidden within. For he who hears you is not merely by your side, and you have no need to go wandering about, no need to be reaching out to God as though you would touch him with your hands.

Wheresoever you are, wheresoever you may be praying, he who hears you is within you, hidden within.’

Several centuries later Meister Eckhart, one of the great mystics, taught: ‘You need not seek him here or there, he is no further than the door of your heart; there he stands patiently awaiting whoever is ready to open up and let him in. No need to call to him from afar: he can hardly wait for you to open up. He longs for you a thousand times more than you long for him.’

In his poem ‘Emerging’ R. S. Thomas, a Welsh clergyman, explores the true nature of prayer.

I would have knelt

long, wrestling with you, wearing

you down. Hear my prayer, Lord, hear

my prayer. As though you were deaf, myriads of mortals have kept up their shrill

cry, explaining your silence by their infirmness.

It begins to appear

this is not what prayer is about.

It is the annihilation of difference, the consciousness of myself in you, and you in me.

An extract from Finding Your Hidden Treasure

© 2010 Benignus O’Rourke OSA

Published by Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd

© Photo: Ian Wilson OSA

Get the book: www.theaugustinians.org