41. Christ lived for thirty years in silence. Then, during his public life, he withdrew to the desert to listen to and speak with his Father. The world vitally needs those who go off into the desert. Because God speaks in silence.
42. Keeping quiet by mastering one’s lips and tongue is a difficult, blazing, and arid work. But we must delve ever deeper into the interior realities that can shape the world usefully. Man must stand silently before God and tell him: God, since you gave me knowledge and the desire for perfection, lead me continually toward the absolute of love. Make me love more and more, because you are the wise artisan who leaves no work unfinished, as long as the clay of the creature does not oppose you with obstacles and refusals. I surrender wordlessly to you, O Lord. I want to be docile and malleable like clay in your hands, for you are a skillful, benevolent potter.
How do you describe what we could call the silence of the eyes?
43. For some years now there has been a constant onslaught of images, lights, and colors that blind man. His interior dwelling is violated by the unhealthy, provocative images of pornography, bestial violence, and all sorts of worldly obscenities that assault purity of heart and infiltrate through the door of sight.
44. The faculty of sight, which ought to see and contemplate the essential things, is turned aside to what is artificial. Our eyes confuse day and night because our whole lives are immersed in a permanent light. In the cities that shine with a thousand lights, our eyes no longer find restful areas of darkness, and consciences no longer recognize sin. To a large extent, humanity has lost an awareness of the seriousness of sin and of the disorder that its presence has introduced into personal, ecclesial, and social life. More than fifty years ago, in his homily on September 20, 1964, Blessed Paul VI stated this tragedy in these terms:
In the language of respectable people today, in their books, in the things that they say about man, you will not find that dreadful word which, however, is very frequent in the religious world—our world—especially in close relation to God: the word is “sin”. In today’s way of thinking, people are no longer regarded as sinners. They are categorized as being healthy, sick, good, strong, weak, rich, poor, wise, ignorant; but one never encounters the word sin. The human intellect having thus been detached from divine wisdom, this word “sin” does not recur because we have lost the concept of sin. One of the most penetrating and grave words of Pope Pius XII, of venerable memory, was, “the modern world has lost the sense of sin.” What is this if not the rupture of our relationship with God, caused precisely by “sin”.
Saint John Paul II echoes this to a great extent in his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio et Paenitentia dated December 2, 1984 (no. 18).
45. Far from God and from the lights that spring from the true Light, man can no longer see the stars, cities have become such flashlights that dazzle our eyes. Modern life does not allow us to look calmly at things. Our eyelids remain open incessantly, and our eyes are forced to look at a sort of ongoing spectacle. The dictatorship of the image, which plunges our attention into a perpetual whirlpool, detests silence. Man feels obliged to seek ever new realities that give him an appetite to own things; but his eyes are red, haggard, and sick. The artificial spectacles and the screens glowing uninterruptedly try to bewitch the mind and the soul. In the brightly lit prisons of the modern world, man is separated from himself and from God. He is riveted to ephemeral things, farther and farther away from what is essential.
46. The silence of the eyes consists of being able to close one’s eyes in order to contemplate God who is in us, in the interior depths of our personal abyss. Images are drugs that we can no longer do without, because they are present everywhere and at every moment. Our eyes are sick, intoxicated, they can no longer close. It is necessary to stop one’s ears, too, because there are sonic images that assault and violate our sense of hearing, our intellect, and our imagination. It is difficult for us not to hear this world that is constantly gesticulating, seeking to stun and daze us so as to abandon us like ships wrecked on the reefs or common, useless scraps cast up on the shore.
47. The tyranny of the image forces man to renounce the silence of the eyes. Humanity itself has returned to the sad prophecy of Isaiah, which was repeated by Jesus: “Seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. . . . For this people’s heart has grown dull, and their ears are heavy of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest they should perceive with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn for me to heal them” (Mt 13:13, 15).
Is the silence of the heart similarly endangered?
48. The silence of the heart is the most mysterious thing, because although we can decide not to talk by keeping quiet, although we can likewise close our eyes so as to see nothing, we have less control over our heart. In it there is a fire that burns, in which passions, anger, resentments, and violence are difficult to control. It is difficult to conform human love to God’s love. Uncontrollable rivers flow through the heart, and it is all man can do to find interior silence. He balks and does not allow himself to be singed by the burning bush of the love of God that blazes incessantly inside of him, in the depths of his heart, without forcing his free will and consent.
49. If man succeeds in “grafting” his heart onto the heart of God, by welcoming the divine powers, he will advance toward silence.
50. How did Saint John manage to place his heart against the heart of Jesus? He just leaned toward Jesus while lying near him, like a faithful dog who takes his place at his master’s feet. This physical proximity is much more than bodily; we are talking about a spiritual graft and an intimate communion that allows Saint John to experience the same sentiments that Jesus does. The one whom Christ “loved” is the Apostle who best described the unfathomable depths of the heart of the Son of God.
51. The journey toward silence of the heart is itself made in silence. Here is the great mystery: silence is attained in silence and grows in silence.
52. Silence of the heart consists of quieting little by little our miserable human sentiments so as to become capable of having the same sentiments as those of Jesus. Silence of the heart is the silence of the passions. It is necessary to die to self in order to join the Son of God in silence. Saint Paul says: “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus” (Phil 2:4-5).
In No Greater Love, Mother Teresa wrote: “Jesus taught us how to pray, and He also told us to learn from Him to be meek and humble of heart. Neither of these can we do unless we know what silence is. Both humility and prayer grow from an ear, mind, and tongue that have lived in silence with God, for in the silence of the heart God speaks.” By differentiating between exterior silence and interior silence, we see that although exterior silence promotes interior silence, silence of speech, gesture, or activity finds its full meaning in the search for God. This search is truly possible only in a silent heart.
53. Mother Teresa had an intimate knowledge of silence. She had had the hard experience of God’s silence, like Saint Teresa of Avila, Saint John of the Cross, and Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. She was a woman of silence because she was a woman of prayer, constantly with God. She wanted to remain in the silence of God. This nun did not like to speak and fled the storms of worldly noise. Mother Teresa enjoyed incredible esteem all over the world, and yet she preserved a childlike spirit. She imitated Christ in his silence, humility, poverty, meekness, and charity. She loved to remain in silence for hours at a time before Jesus present in the Eucharist. For her, to pray was to love with all her heart, with all her soul, and with all her strength; it was to give her whole being and all her time to the Lord. The most beautiful offering that she wanted to make of herself, and of all her activities on behalf of the poor, was to devote long intervals in her day to a heart-to-heart conversation with God, so that those moments of intimacy might allow her heart to swell with an u
nconditional love. Like Jesus, her heart always thirsted for love. Jesus’ cry “I thirst” is inscribed in all the sisters’ chapels of the Missionaries of Charity.
54. For my part, I know that all the great moments of my day are found in the incomparable hours that I spend on my knees in darkness before the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. I am, so to speak, swallowed up in God and surrounded on all sides by his presence. I would like to belong now to God alone and to plunge into the purity of his love. And yet, I can tell how poor I am, how far from loving the Lord as he loved me to the point of giving himself up for me.
55. I remember the strong, distressing words of Mother Teresa to a young priest, Angelo Comastri, who today is a cardinal archpriest of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. In his book Dio scrive dritto, there are magnificent passages. Here is his account of that upsetting encounter with the saint, which I relate here with great emotion:
I telephoned the general house of the Missionaries of Charity so as to be able to meet Mother Teresa of Calcutta, but their answer was categorical: “It is not possible to meet Mother; her engagements do not allow it.” I went there anyway. The Sister who came to open the door for me very politely asked me, “What do you want?” “I would just like to meet Mother Teresa for a few moments.” Surprised, the Sister replied, “I am sorry! That is not possible!” I did not budge and thus made the Sister understand that I would not leave without having met Mother Teresa. The Sister went away for a few moments and came back in the company of Mother Teresa. . . .
I was startled and speechless. Mother had me sit down in a little room near the chapel. Meanwhile I had recovered a bit and managed to say: “Mother, I am a very young priest: I’m taking my first steps! I came to ask you to accompany me with your prayers.” Mother looked tenderly and kindly at me, then, smiling, she replied: “I always pray for priests. I will pray for you also.” Then she gave me a Miraculous Medal, put it in my hand, and asked me, “For how much time do you pray each day?” I was astonished and a little embarrassed. Then, gathering my thoughts, I replied, “Mother, I celebrate Holy Mass each day, I pray the Breviary each day; you know that these days that is a proof of heroism [this was in 1969, before the Divine Office was simplified]! I pray the rosary each day also and very gladly, because I learned it from my mother.” Mother Teresa, with her rough hands, clasped the rosary that she always had with her. Then she fixed on me her eyes, which were filled with light and love, and said: “That is not enough, my son! That is not enough, because love cannot be reduced to the indispensable minimum; love demands the maximum!” I did not understand Mother Teresa’s words right away, and, as though to justify myself, I replied, “Mother, I expected from you instead this question: What acts of charity do you do?” Suddenly Mother Teresa’s face became very serious again, and she said in a stern tone of voice: “Do you think that I could practice charity if I did not ask Jesus every day to fill my heart with his love? Do you think that I could go through the streets looking for the poor if Jesus did not communicate the fire of his charity to my heart?” I then felt very small. . . .
I looked at Mother Teresa with profound admiration and the sincere desire to enter into the mystery of her soul, which was so filled with the presence of God. Enunciating each word, she added: “Read the Gospel attentively, and you will see that Jesus sacrificed even charity for prayer. And do you know why? To teach us that, without God, we are too poor to help the poor!” At that time we saw so many priests and religious abandoning prayer in order to immerse themselves—as they said—in social work. Mother Teresa’s words seemed to me like a ray of sunshine, and I repeated slowly in my heart of hearts: “Without God, we are too poor to be able to help the poor!”
56. Let us devote a lot of time to God, to prayer and adoration. Let us allow ourselves to be nourished abundantly and ceaselessly by the Word of God. We know the hardness of our heart, and it takes a lot of time for it to soften and to be humbled at the contact of the Host and to be imbued with the love of God.
57. There is nothing littler, meeker, or more silent than Christ present in the Host. This little piece of bread embodies the humility and perfect silence of God, his tenderness and his love for us. If we want to grow and to be filled with the love of God, it is necessary to plant our life firmly on three great realities: the Cross, the Host, and the Virgin: crux, hostia, et virgo. . . . These are three mysteries that God gave to the world in order to structure, fructify, and sanctify our interior life and to lead us to Jesus. These three mysteries are to be contemplated in silence.
58. There are external situations that should promote interior silence. It is necessary to provide ourselves with the means of the best possible environment for finding within us the silence that allows us to be in intimate communion with God. Christ very clearly recommends this search for intimacy: “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Mt 6:6). But our real room is precisely ourselves. Man is invited to enter into himself so as to remain alone with God.
Jesus never stops setting the example: “In these days he went out to the hills to pray; and all night he continued in prayer to God” (Lk 6:12). Thus he teaches us the circumstances that are conducive to silent prayer.
In the presence of God, in silence, we become meek and humble of heart. God’s meekness and humility penetrate us, and we enter into a real conversation with him. Humility is a condition and a result of silence. Silence needs meekness and humility, and it also opens for us the way to these two qualities. The humblest, meekest, and most silent of all beings is God. Silence is the only means by which to enter into this great mystery of God.
I am certain that silence is a divine liberation that unifies man and places him at the center of himself, in the depths of God’s mysteries. In silence, man is absorbed by the divine and the world’s movements no longer have any hold on his soul. In silence, we set out from God and we arrive at God.
The external conditions that foster silence depend on the individual and may vary according to the circumstances of one’s life. But what should we do in order to enter “inside ourselves”?
59. In the life of prayer, some support is necessary, because we always run the risk of going far from ourselves when we are invaded by noises, dreams, and memories.
Reading the Bible silently and diligently is the best method. The Gospels place the reader in front of Christ, his life and his mind. They help us to contemplate and to meditate on the life of Jesus, from his birth in the crib in Bethlehem to his death and Resurrection. That is how we will feel involved in his life. In this silence that confronts us with his Word, God is close to us. He does not leave us. We perceive him, and he perceives us. This face-to-face inundates us with his light and imbues us with his presence. We stand facing each other, and we welcome each other reciprocally in interior silence.
60. The Gospel explains how important it is to mistrust sterile enthusiasms, intense passions, and ideological or political slogans. When Jesus went down from Bethany to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, he was given a grand, solemn reception. The people spread coats and branches beneath his feet and acclaimed him as the Son of David. They all cried: “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!” (Jn 12:13). They all gave testimony to the resurrection of Lazarus, who had already been buried in the tomb. For this reason, the crowd welcomed Jesus with great pomp. At the sound of this triumphant entry and this exceptionally festive reception, all Jerusalem was in turmoil. Everyone wondered: “Who is this?” (Mt 21:10). As was his custom, Jesus went into the Temple and healed the lame and the blind who were there (Mt 21:14). These miracles provoked the indignation of the high priests and the scribes. But Jesus was happy to hear the innocent hearts of the little children acclaim him, because it was written that out of their mouths should come the praise of God (Mt 21:16). When the festivities were over and it was late, oddly enough, seeing no
one to offer him hospitality or to give him something to eat, Jesus left the city and went back to spend the night in Bethany with his disciples.
The Son of God was welcomed triumphantly but found no one to open his door to him. Similarly, in our age, how often our welcome, our love, and our praises are superficial, without substance, merely a coat of religious varnish.
Today we content ourselves with performing rituals that have no effect on our everyday lives because they are lived without recollection, without interiority, and without truth. The inhabitants of Jerusalem did not understand the profound significance of the visit from the Son of God; the people, indulging in their passions and their political ambitions, were demonstrative, superficial, and noisy.
Prey to all sorts of worldly disturbances, they could not understand the mystery of the visit from the King-Messiah, the King who brings peace to the nations, as the prophet Zechariah had announced:
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on a donkey,
on a colt the foal of a donkey.
I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the war horse from Jerusalem;
and the battle bow shall be cut off,
and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth. (Zech 9:9-10)
The inhabitants of Jerusalem wanted a messianic leader, without seeking to comprehend the silent grandeur of Jesus’ message. The people did not welcome Christ in their souls; they indulged in a mere demonstration of colorful and excessive force. The most difficult thing is to love Jesus in spirit and in truth, so as to welcome him into one’s heart and into the depths of one’s being.
The Power of Silence Page 5
