August 1, 2006
This is probably not an original thought, but I have always viewed silence as “the language of love.” Let me explain.
When two people begin to date and fall in love, there is excitement and wonder over each other. “Is he or she the one?” they often ask. Most of their conversations in this early period of their relationship consist of questioning the other person and observing them. “What kind of music do they like? … Do they go to Church? … Can I get along with their family?”
However, as life goes on and the couple gets married and begins to have children, something changes in their relationship. The need for conversation and questions is not as great as it was in the beginning. I am not implying that couples should not talk, obviously that is very important; but they have grown to know each other so well, their love for one another has stood the test of time, and there is a “silence” that has developed in their relationship that each person is comfortable with. A silence that is not an absence, but a deep interior awareness and knowledge of the other that is really unexplainable by words.
A certain amount of silence in our own life is extremely important, especially in our relationship with God. The psalmist writes, “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)
Prayer is not just a time to dump our demands upon God, recite a few vocal prayers, and expect that they will be answered exactly how we want and when we want. It is something much deeper and much more intimate because God is not some shallow, uninterested, stressed out person who is continually too busy to spend time with us. Rather, He is the true Lover of the human person and desires that we spend time with Him.
A good friend of mine, who has been a Trappist monk for 52 years, once told me that prayer is 50/50, half speaking and half listening. This is because the foundation of prayer is relational—meaning, a relationship. What kind of friend would you be to someone if you did all the talking in your relationship and never allowed the other person to speak?
In silence we discover many “frightening” things, such as our own weaknesses, sins, fears and failures. After all, in silence there is nothing to hide behind and nowhere to run to; yet through this apparent difficulty, God is inviting us to draw closer to Him so that He can be our healer and our only source of hope. If we persevere we will encounter the mercy and love of
God dwelling inside us, or as Saint Augustine said, we discover the God who is “closer to us than consciousness itself.”
In a world as loud, busy, and hectic as ours, God can seem so far away because of all the noise and distractions we place in His way. God is closer to us than we realize and He wants to speak to us more than we realize; but we need a few moments of silence each day, when we put everything else on hold and, like Saint John, rest in the arms of the Lord. For a few minutes today turn off your cell phone, your computer, your pager, your TV, and spend some time in silence with the Lord, for He is near and is calling us to Him. What could be better than this?
Br. Jeremiah Myriam Shryock CFR
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