Augustine would tell us that we have all we need for our spiritual journey because we have within us the greatest of all teachers, Christ himself. ‘Christ lives in the heart of each one of us, and he is our best teacher,’ he writes. ‘I, the preacher, am pouring a torrent of words into your ears. My words are meaningless unless he who dwells within you reveals their sense to you.

‘Your true teacher will always be the teacher within. It is he who enables you to understand, in the depths of your being, the truth of what is said to you.’

In his commentary on John’s Gospel he explains: ‘God speaks to us within. He speaks to us in our inner self when we are attentive to him. Without words he instructs us in silence, drenching our souls with the light of understanding. He stirs in us an eager longing for the beautiful intimacy of his presence within. But it is through our daily practice that we become capable of this intimacy. It is by walking with him that we grow, by going forward that we walk, so that we may reach the goal’ (Tract 54 8.12.44–50).

It is a major step in our spiritual life to discover the teacher within and to want to learn from him alone. This teacher forms us in a way that no other teacher can do.

So in our time of silence we remain still and keep ourselves present to him in an attitude of loving receptivity. We remain constantly attentive, knowing that God, who dwells in the depths of our being, is always doing great things.

Out of our resting comes the vision of how our lives might change. Out of our openness comes the willingness to conform to what God’s spirit prompts us to do.

Dr E. F. Schumacher, the author of Small is Beautiful, was in his forties when he travelled to Burma as an economic adviser to the UN. At the time he was an agnostic, he said, without any spiritual roots, a typical Western intellectual.

While he was there he was struck by the air of calmness people there carried about with them. He knew that many of them at some stage in their lives spent time in a Buddhist monastery learning to be still. So he decided to try to learn about the routine of monastic silence. He cancelled his engagements and took himself off for five weeks to a Buddhist monastery. Those five weeks proved a turning point.

At first Dr Schumacher found it physically difficult to sit still. Once he achieved that, he found his emotions stopped running away with him. Next he found his heart became quiet. Finally, as a result, his mind became clear, and this surprised him. He had always supposed himself to be clear-minded.

He now realised that in the past his mind had been obscured by the ever-shifting clouds of his restless desires. And it was out of this new clarity of mind that he saw his spiritual path being revealed to him. He became a Catholic and was regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of the twentieth century.

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