Augustine tells us very simply that if we can call our mind home and keep our mind still we will get a glimpse of God. ‘If only our minds could be held steady they would be still for a while, and for that short moment we would glimpse the splendour of eternity, which is forever still.’

In his Confessions he recounts sharing such a glimpse with his mother, Monica, as they rested on their journey back to Africa after his conversion. They were staying with friends in Ostia and it was there a few days later that his mother died.

‘Not long before the day on which she was to die,’ Augustine recalls, ‘my mother and I were alone, by the window which overlooked the garden of the house at Ostia. We talked a long time together and our conversation was full of joy and peace. It seemed as if our hearts were fed from the stream that flows from your fountain. ‘We talked about the joys of life and its pleasures and we were sure that no matter how great they were they could not compare with the life of the world beyond death. We seemed to pass beyond all the wonders of your world, even beyond our very selves. And we came to that place of plenty, where you feed us forever with your truth. ‘And while we spoke of the eternal wisdom, longing for it and straining for it with all the strength of our hearts, for one fleeting instant we reached out and touched it.

‘Suppose, we said, that the noise within were to cease ... Suppose that the heavens and even our own soul were silent, no longer thinking of itself but passing beyond. Suppose that our dreams and our imagination spoke no more. That every tongue and every sign and all that is transient grew silent – for all these things have the same message to tell, if only we can hear it, and their message is this: We did not make ourselves, but he who abides for ever made us.

‘Suppose, we said, that after giving us this message and bidding us listen to him who made them, they fell silent and he alone should speak to us, not through them, but in his own voice, so that we should hear him speaking. Suppose that we heard himself, with none of these things between ourselves and him, just as in that brief moment my mother and I had reached out and touched the eternal wisdom that abides over all things. Suppose that were to continue. Would this not be what we understand by the words Come and share the joy of your Lord?’

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