Silence in the Lord

                                                                            Silence in the Lord

                                                                             Bernard Callaghan                           

                                                                                                                                                              “In the silence of the heart

                                                                                                                                                               the Lord speaks."             

                                                                                                                                                                  -Mother Theresa

On a Friday afternoon, Janet, her autistic child in hand, rushes into a grocery store. She lands her little girl in front of a grocery cart; her daughter’s legs dangle out as the mother speeds around, grabbing barbecue chicken; her husband will be home early, so there no time to prepare dinner. She grabs a lemon pie at the bakery and heads to a fast checkout, but ten people are ahead of her. Finally, she gets to her car and speeds home; the family gobbles dinner, and she collapses in her chair. Her Bible which she reads for Evening Prayer is on the coffee table, but exhausted she falls asleep.
  Meanwhile, another mother, Sally, has sung her children to sleep. Her husband has phoned because he will be home at the usual time. An easy supper allows her to pick up her scripture. As she flips through the Psalms, she whispers, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.” She lands on her favorite verse in Psalm 46, “Be still, man, and know that I am God.” She quietens her heart; outside she can hear the wind rustling the leaves. A deep peace comes over her as she rests in the Lord: she is experiencing silence in the Lord.   
  After reading these typical situations from our modern world, we might ask why Janet does not experience silence in the Lord too? In charity, we cannot judge her because busyness (fatigue) is a reality of life. But could the Lord be calling her to silence despite (or even through) the hectic life she leads. Indeed, whatever our circumstances might be, through prayer, the Lord offers us the gift of silence in the Lord.

   But what is this silence the world so desperately needs? In an Apostolic Exhortation, “The Word of God,” (Nov.11 2010) Pope Benedict XVI wrote: “Only in silence can the word of God find a home in us, as it did in Mary, woman of the word and inseparably, woman of silence.” The silence the Holy Father spoke off is not just the absence of noise, but a grace through which we share, even in our limited humanity, in the divine life. If we accept this statement, the most immediate question is how can we experience silence in the Lord?

   First, we must be in a right relationship with the Lord, ourselves and our neighbor. This requirement may range from asking forgiveness of a spouse, a friend, or a colleague to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, especially for long standing hurts and resentments.          
Second, we invite God’s Spirit to work in our heart and minds. We distinguish between understanding and knowing in the biblical sense.  Influenced by the Greeks, the modern world reads “know” solely intellectually. For example, we know Theorem 11 in Geometry, the causes of The Hundred Years War, or the proofs for the existence of God, but for the Hebrews the center of man is the heart- the understanding heart. In the Old Testament “know” literally refers to the intimate relationship between a man and his wife.

By comparison, to know God is to have a deep intimate relationship with Him. To complete our answer then, when someone experiences through the Holy Spirit silence in the Lord, this gift (or grace) is primarily an intimate experience of God felt in and through an understanding heart.

  Third, we need to rediscover and practice meaningful prayer. To speak of prayer to most Catholics is to suggest the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Creed, the Glory and other basic prayers. All well and good. We do not intend to question how God’s Spirit leads people to prayer, but to ask what prayer is. The Word Among Us offers an answer: “[P]rayer isn’t about words we bring to God. It’s about bringing him a heart that’s empty of self, a ‘broken and humbled heart (Psalm 51:19) that he can fill with his love” (April 2011). We surrender to Him all our joys and sorrows, strengths and weaknesses, and even our complaints. In a homily Pope Francis reenforced this teaching on prayer; we are “entrusting ourselves to the Father’s embrace (June 21, 2013).  

   But some may counter silence in the Lord is only for monks: we lead too busy a life to try to live a monastic style. There is some truth in this response because we work out our salvation in relation to others in sometimes painful circumstances. But to whom do we go for regenerating silence?

  Also, the above rebut raises a much deeper question: does experiencing silence in the Lord have any connection to the real world? For ages, theologians have pondered this subject which is beyond this article. In our modern world, contemplation, silence in the Lord, for the contemporary Catholic, indeed anyone seeking the Lord, should lead to action. Contemplation and action are faces of the same coin, modern living.
On the connection between solitude, which relates to silence in the Lord, and the active life, priest/psychologist Henri Nouwen in Making All Things New writes: “The more we train ourselves to spend time with God and him alone, the more we will discover that God is always with us in all places. Then we will be able to recognize him amid a busy active life”.    

Pope St. John Paul II. fused prayer and action best. He traveled the world, faced down the Polish Communists, and even contributed to the fall of the Berlin Wall, but only after he spent silent hours prostrate before the Blessed Sacrament. The Lord empowered him not to avoid the world but to transform it into the likeness of Christ.
 

In sum, only in prayerful silence in the Lord do we listen with a heart of faith to the prompting and whispering of the Holy Spirit received in our Baptism and deepened and strengthened in Confirmation. In fact, the modern world has become so godless and violent, it is imperative we seek silence in the Lord not to escape the noise but, like John Paul II, to return to the world and transform it as Jesus would. Despite our fallen nature, silence in the Lord empowers us to both embrace and co-redeem our circumstances.

    Finally, let us return to Janet; how might a hoped-for conversion look for her? The house is quiet. Janet investigates the kitchen where her husband is rocking their daughter to sleep. The mother returns to her chair near the coffee table. As she whispers, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening,” she flips through her Bible to Psalm 62:1. Then, like Jesus’ mother, Mary, Janet ponders: “For God alone my soul waits in silence.”
 
                                                                                   Bernard J. Callaghan

                                                                                bandscall@eastlink.ca