There are many ways of beginning the inward journey to our own hearts. We shall each find the way that suits us best.

But The Cloud of Unknowing suggests one very simple way. ‘When you sit down to pray in quietness and feel that God is calling you to this kind of prayer, then simply lift up your heart in a loving way. To the God who created you, the God who rescued you. To the God who is now calling you to this way of being with him in silence.

‘This simple reaching out to God is enough,’ the fourteenth- century writer assures us. It is prayer in itself. ‘If you wish, you can enfold this reaching out to God in a single word,’ he says. ‘Take a little word, of one syllable. The shorter the better. Maybe a word like “God” or “love”. Choose any word you like, a word of one syllable that you like best. Fix this word to your heart, so that whatever happens it will not go away.

‘This word is your protection, whether you are at peace or disturbed. With this word you beat on the cloud that stands between you and God. With this word you can beat down any other thoughts that assail you. Any other thoughts that come can be met with this one little word. Good thoughts as well as disturbing ones. Stay with your word, and you will find that all other thoughts will not trouble you for long.’

The tradition of using one simple word or phrase in this way goes back to a contemporary of Augustine’s, John Cassian. In the fourth century he wrote this about keeping prayer as simple as possible: ‘Take a short line of a psalm and it shall be your shield and buckler.’ Rowan Williams advises that it does not matter at first how much time we give to our silent prayer, so long as we can give some regular time. ‘The challenge is to find enough time to become quiet enough and still enough,’ he says.

‘Somebody once said that the deepest problem in prayer is often not the absence of God but the absence of me. I’m not actually there. My mind is everywhere. So take a few deep breaths, and use a simple formula like the Orthodox “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy.”’

Familiar formulae and rhythms that come naturally actually matter, the Archbishop writes: ‘I’ve sometimes advised people to try to find a verse of a hymn that means something to them or just a single phrase. Things that people only half remember but phrases that stick and, if you let them, sit in your mind.

‘That’s a beginning of being there. And when you are there God can relate to you. God cannot speak to you if you are not actually there.’

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