Once, a woman arriving for an eight-day retreat seemed to me to be utterly exhausted. So for her first day she took my advice to sit in the garden and admire the budding blossoms. It was early spring.

The second day came. I asked her to continue to sit in the garden and admire the beauty around her.

On the morning of the third day she looked a bit perplexed when I asked her to do the same.

When we reached the fourth morning she said to me: ‘For the first few days I thought I was on a botanical journey. But now I see that I am only just ready to start my retreat properly.’

Her expectation was probably to be plunged into a programme of Scripture reading, spiritual exercises and spiritual direction. But sometimes when we set aside time for the Lord we are in no fit state to settle down to pray.

It is not because we lack goodwill, or because our faith is weak. It is not that there is something in our lives, some moral problem perhaps, coming between us and God. It is simply that we are too anxious, too agitated, too confused. We ignore the signs of heaviness and tiredness and try to get started. Our training has probably conditioned us to plod on no matter how weary the mind and heart may be. No wonder our attempts to pray can so often seem to fail!

When we are exhausted we need to rest. This applies as much to prayer as to our daily living. So we should give ourselves permission to rest.

This is what our silent prayer is all about. We rest in the Lord. We try to be quiet and let the silence speak to us, to be quiet and let the Lord work in us, to be quiet and just enjoy being with him, even if we feel nothing.

Sitting in the priory garden quietly absorbing the sights and sounds of early spring was a perfect way to start a journey into deeper silence.

Now, the invitation to use our prayer time as primarily a time of rest is one our ego will resist. The ego wants to be active, doing, making an effort to show God we are seriously intent on making good use of our time with him. To be invited to sit and rest does not please the ego. It will do anything rather than take a back seat. It will fight every effort on our part to let God ‘do the driving’.

So we must be prepared for resistance from within to our plans for our prayer time. The more determined we are to do nothing, the more frustrated our ego becomes and the more it will resist. When, after maybe a long period spent in resting with the Lord, we feel we have achieved nothing, feel it is a waste of time, we can be sure that the ego is urging us to admit failure and give up.

Augustine found ‘ego’ a problem. ‘All the time I wanted to stand and listen. To listen to your voice,’ he told God. ‘But I could not, because another voice, the voice of my own ego, dragged me away.’

Once we become aware of the wiles of our own ego we shall find it easier to do nothing but rest in the Lord without feeling guilty.

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