Our prayer of silence is bearing fruit when we feel life as less of a burden and we begin to recover the elusive joy of being in the present moment. Moments when we feel totally present, at home with ourselves. Moments when our thinking ceases for a little, and we see.

Wordsworth, in his poem Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, speaks of the serene and blessed mood in which ‘the heavy and the weary weight of all this unintelligible world is lightened’ and ‘we see into the life of things.’

To be at ease in one’s mind is to accept with joy the gift of the present moment. It is the ability to see without judging, seeing things as they really are, seeing things as filled with an inner splendour.

To see without judging is to live in delight, to be content to see without straining after meaning or understanding. We are content to let things be. This is true above all of one’s own self. We look at ourselves without judging.

In daily life we are so used to seeing ourselves in a harsh, condemning light that we cannot bear to look for long, cannot bear to be alone with ourselves. So, without realising it, we spend our lives running away; anything rather than face who we are, or who we think we are. But when we come to rest in silence and overcome our resistance to being at home with ourselves, we see into our own hearts. We accept ourselves as we are.

The present moment is full of joy if we can allow ourselves to rest in it. We rest in God and we delight in him and delight in what we are doing.

In Yeats’ poem All Souls’ Night an Irish woman, Florence Emery, who was renowned for her beauty and who dreaded the onset of age and wrinkles, took herself off to India as a teacher. There she learned about the soul’s journey:

How it is whirled about

Wherever the orbit of the moon can reach 

Until it plunge into the sun;

And there, free and yet fast, 

Being both Chance and Choice, 

Forget its broken toys

And sink into its own delight at last.

When we come home to ourselves, when we sink into our own delight, we also come home to God, who holds us fast yet leaves us free.

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