Silence

During this season of Lent, we are asking everyone to depart the church after our Masses in silence, to better contemplate the mystery of the Mass and understand the sacredness of the action we just partook in.

The quiet and daily sacrifice of the Mass offers what is true and eternal, punctuated by reverent silence. For centuries, Catholics understood this and entered and spoke in a church only in hushed tones. Daily Masses still offer this, while sadly, most Sunday Masses sound more like a theatre before the feature is shown than a place of recollection and reverence.

We all thirst for God, for his unchanging permanence, his eternal wisdom, his steady love. There is no getting around it. But we all find different ways to try to satisfy it. Most of our culture fills it in the worst ways possible, like drinking salt water when one is dying of thirst in the open sea. Noise, sound bites, bright screens, hectic days, deadlines, and short attention spans all contribute to the mental clutter that keeps us from hearing the whispering voice of God.

We are so attached to these bad habits that the silence of prayer, at Mass, at adoration, or even just in a quiet church or peaceful room, can feel limiting. If we are looking for our usual attachments, like a quick glance at our phones, then it feels arid and even empty. But what happens when one experiences something radically other – when phones are silenced, and the outside noise is muted, when conversations are forced to stop when eyes and attention shift away from ourselves and onto another – to The Other?

Something happens deep within our souls when we hear God speak in his native tongue. It is much more than the absence of noise. Space is created for something we never knew existed before, like a new way to think or a new language to speak. There is a crack or a fissure in reality–like an archeologist finding a new, long hidden chamber–that gives us fresh room to grow, to know, to believe. Silence offers us the opportunity to excavate this new place in our soul: this place where, like the woman at the well, we can meet the one who knows everything we ever did and help us to set it all aright, even–or especially–when we have made most of it very wrong.

Lent is the most natural time to seek out silence and hear God’s voice. We may enter into it a bit hesitantly or fearfully, thinking we will find nothing, but we might just leave it knowing we have found everything–the One who endures, slakes, heals, leads, energizes, restores, forgives, calms and loves.

Perhaps too we can carry this on even after Lent concludes, to keep silence before and after Mass so we can invite the Lord into hearts, and listen to what He wishes to say.