Discovering inner peace is not always easy, as Augustine himself found. In his Confessions he recalls: ‘The sound of your secret melody I could not catch no matter how hard I tried. My heart was deafened by the din of my mind.’

Augustine would interpret the third commandment, to keep the Sabbath day holy, as an invitation to the stillness of mind and heart we are seeking. ‘The Third Commandment calls us to quietness of heart, tranquillity of mind,’ he preached in one of his sermons. ‘This is holiness. Because here is the Spirit of God. This is what a true holiday means, quietness and rest.’

And he went on: ‘Unquiet people recoil from the Holy Spirit. They love quarrelling. They love argument. In their restlessness they do not allow the quiet of the Lord’s Sabbath to enter their lives.

‘Against such restlessness we are offered a kind of Sabbath of the heart. As if God were saying, “Stop being so restless. Quieten the uproar in your minds. Let go of the idle fantasies that fly around within.” God is saying, “Be still and see that I am God.”

‘But you, so restless, refuse to be still. You are like the Egyptians tormented by gnats. These, the tiniest of flies, always restless, flying about aimlessly, swarm at your eyes, giving no rest. They are back as soon as you drive them off. Just like the futile fantasies that swarm in our minds. Keep the commandment,’ he says. ‘Beware of the plague.’ When we rest in stillness and try to quieten the uproar in our minds, at first our heads may seem more full of noise than before we started. We become aware of the gnats that plague us. This is because we are now more conscious of what we are thinking.

Some people will become discouraged if, after waiting ten or 15 minutes, nothing seems to happen and the mind is still racing. But if we are patient and are prepared to stay in the silence our thoughts begin eventually to quieten. Instead of a dozen thoughts a minute we may find ourselves dwelling on just one thought.

If we feel we are making little progress on our journey into silence we try not to worry, and we try not to become intense. Abbot Chapman gives us good advice: ‘Intensity in prayer causes fatigue. It doesn’t do any good to the prayer. It is better to be quite peaceful, without effort, except the effort to remain at peace.’

On a visit to the United States an English archbishop was being interviewed by an eager young woman reporter. She put some searching questions. She asked, ‘Did you pray this morning?’ He answered, ‘Yes.’

‘How long did you pray for?’ she queried. ‘Half an hour,’ the Archbishop replied. ‘And what did you say to God in that half hour?’ ‘Well,’ he answered, ‘I talked to God for about a minute. But it took me 29 minutes to get there.’

That is the secret. Taking time to let our restless minds quieten, to get in touch with something deep within ourselves, to become aware of God’s presence.

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