A few years ago, on the third day of a retreat I was giving, a loud knock on the door of the room set aside for seeing people heralded the arrival of the oldest sister in the community. She wanted ‘a few minutes’.

Sitting down, she said: ‘I was very cross on the first night. You told us not to read during the retreat and I had brought all the notes from my last retreat in case you were boring. But yesterday I went into the chapel to try to be quiet. I thought I heard the Lord say, “How can I talk to you when you are all over the place?”’

For people trained to exert every effort to lift up mind and heart to God in time of prayer, the invitation to rest might seem a surrender to idleness. To rest from effort seems to deny the value of our faithful attempts to please God.

All our lives, perhaps, we have strained to please God by trying to keep our minds attuned to our words in prayer. We have struggled to ward off stray thoughts. We have failed again and again. But we have gone on believing that we must keep trying. The result so often is a weariness with prayer, a feeling of guilt, or we resign ourselves to simply reciting set prayers.

Of course, no time spent in prayer is ever wasted. Our efforts are always of value. God accepts all our prayers, delighting in the gift we make him of our time.

But he must weep for us as he sees us wear ourselves down by our struggles and exhaust ourselves in our battles to fight the mind’s wandering. He must weep for us, too, when we get so discouraged. All he wants from us is to rest in him, and allow him to give us rest for our souls.

There is an important moment in the life of Jesus’ disciples when they returned to him after their first attempts to minister in his name and with his power. ‘Come apart to a lonely place and rest awhile,’ Jesus said to them.

The disciples perhaps would have wanted to talk about their experiences, but he wanted them to rest with him in a place where they could be all alone. This is the offer, the invitation, to us too. To be quiet, at ease with God.

‘Come to me all you who are weary and I will give you rest,’ says Jesus.

How easy it is for us to miss that invitation.

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