fr paul's blog

YOUR FATHER WILL REWARD YOU
The silence we speak of is not emptiness.  Thanks to it, we find God in the depths of the heart; the God who is closer to me than I am to myself.  The silence is a fullness.  It is not the silence of those who wish to escape from life and seek self-satisfaction.
"Your Father will reward you" with the conviction that is expressed in Psalm 139 "You know all there is about me...........All my ways lie open to you".
When I accept the fact that God lives in me "in secret", then what Christ said comes to pass: "Your Father will reward you". Can we give this phrase its full force?
Can we really believe it?  It is true that the Spirit is God's "first fruit to those who believe".  The gift of God, or His response to the appeal of our heart, is the Holy Spirit.
In prayer, as in action, only silence allows us to find God and not go astray.  Only the person who is prepared to experience his personal poverty and emptiness can be filled with the fullness of God.
It all comes back to educating the heart to silence.  This is the work of a lifetime, never fully achieved.  Anyone who takes up this task risks discovering with amazement that after years of spiritual exercises, he has never prayed in the truth of his heart.
He has stayed on the surface of his being, satisfied with a selfish, sentimental, intellectual form of prayer which gives only occasional peace.  Let him consent to be himself, nothing but himself, before God.  This is the first stage of a prayer that comes from the heart.
Then we shall discover that this prayer is a simple thing.  We ask the Lord to lead us into this simplicity.  On the day we shall begin to pray as we should.