Question 008
What should I look for when I go into myself?
Where God is there is peace… the Sabbath of the heart. For it listens to God, who promises great things. For it listens to God, who promises great things, and if it labors in the present, it expands in hope of the future, where the clouds of sadness are brightened; as the apostle says, “rejoice in hope (Rom. 12:12). And that very joy in the tranquility of our hope is our Sabbath.
from St. Augustine Answers 101 Questions on Prayer by Fr. Ermatinger.
When we seek God within our soul, for this shall be the place of His abode in eternity – the vineyard where we in the present labor, by His grace, to prepare for Him – we are confronted by the question of how to find Him if He should visit our soul and make Himself known. Above all, God’s presence is that of peace, of tranquility. This is not a quietism but is the tranquilitas ordinis, the tranquility of order. This tranquil peace is the state of God’s justice within ourselves, of the right ordering of the self, and the reception of charity, which brings righteousness. It is a light that illumines the soul, its faculties, and permits the soul to “see”, which is to discern the proper placement of things, their orderings, and thus act according to the good. It is not akin to the light of the mundane world, which allows the eye to recognize things, but it is a light that allows one to perceive the nature, the being, of things and thus act according to nature and end. In this light, man sees that he is man and the gulf between him and God, his creator, but he is at peace for in this perception is the hope of the Sabbath rest at the end of time, where the light of God shall ever be constant, and labors finished shall find the reward of God eternal presence within the mansions of the soul. — PPP
Icon of the Transfiguration of Christ (detail)