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Finding Your Hidden Treasure

Reviewed by Richard Sewell.

I was very pleasantly surprised by this book in which I discovered a rich storehouse of wisdom. It comprises 64 short chapters in seven sections and is an accessible read without being in the least bit superficial. It is a guided study through the virtues and benefits of silence and silent prayer and the author is a very effective advocate.

Benignus O’Rourke is an Augustinian friar and a member of the community at Clare Priory, Suffolk. His vocation means that he has ample experience in leading people towards deeper self-understanding and more profound prayer. It also means that he has a wealth of stories of people struggling with prayer and silence that prevents the book from being simply one man’s good advice.

Additionally, the author draws upon his Augustinian tradition, quoting the saint’s life story and words regularly throughout the book. But I greatly valued the fact that he drew also on a wider array of saints and authors, for example Elie Wiesel, Iris Murdoch and Gerard Manley Hopkins. As a result, the book is itself a treasure of quotes and vignettes which can be helpful for preparing talks, sermons or in guiding others. It is a book that would make an excellent gift to someone already forming habits of prayer but who wanted to learn to pray more deeply.

Guidance on prayer is a notoriously subjective thing, but I certainly found O’Rourke to be one whose voice I wanted to listen to. He helped to re-convince me of the importance of exploring the path of silence as a way of growing in knowledge of God and of self. The author’s tone is always realistic and never pious. Hence this is a book which would be a valued addition to most people’s resources.