SILENCE IS SO NECESSARY
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
We live in a noisy world. Our towns and
cities are full of noise. There is noise in the skies and on the roads. There
is noise in our homes, and even in our churches. And most of all there is noise
in our minds and hearts.
The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard once
wrote: ‘The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I
were a doctor and I were asked for my advice, I should reply: “Create silence!
Bring people to silence!” The Word of God cannot be heard in the noisy world of
today. And even if it were trumpeted forth with all the panoply of noise so
that it could be heard in the midst of all the other noise, then it would no
longer be the Word of God. Therefore, create silence!’
‘Create silence!’ There’s a
challenge here. Surely speaking is a good and healthy thing? Yes indeed. Surely
there are bad kinds of silence? Yes again. But still Kierkegaard is on to
something.
There is a simple truth at stake. There
can be no real relationship with God, there can be no real meeting with God,
without silence. Silence prepares for that meeting and silence follows it. An
early Christian wrote, ‘To someone who has experienced Christ himself, silence
is more precious than anything else.’ For us God has the first word, and our
silence opens our hearts to hear him. Only then will our own words really be
words, echoes of God’s, and not just more litter on the rubbish dump of noise.
‘How silently, how silently, the
wondrous gift is given.’ So the carol goes. For all the noise, rush and
rowdiness of contemporary Christmases, we all know there is a link between
Advent and silence, Christmas and silence. Our cribs are silent places. Who can
imagine Mary as a noisy person? In the Gospels, St Joseph never says a word; he
simply obeys the words brought him by angels. And when John the Baptist later
comes out with words of fire, it is after years of silence in the desert. Add
to this the silence of our long northern nights, and the silence that follows
the snow. Isn’t all this asking us to still ourselves?
A passage from the Old Testament Book of
Wisdom describes the night of Israel’s Exodus from Egypt as a night full of
silence. It is used by the liturgy of the night of Jesus’ birth:
‘When a deep silence covered all things
and night was in the middle of its course, your all-powerful Word, O Lord,
leapt from heaven’s royal throne’ (Wis 18:14-15).
‘Holy night, silent night!’ So we sing.
The outward silence of Christmas night invites us to make silence within us.
Then the Word can leap into us as well, as a wise man wrote: ‘If deep silence
has a hold on what is inside us, then into us too the all-powerful Word will
slip quietly from the Father’s throne.’
This is the Word who proceeds from the
silence of the Father. He became an infant, and ‘infant’ means literally ‘one
who doesn’t speak.’ The child Jesus would have cried – for air and drink and
food – but he didn’t speak. ‘Let him who has ears to hear, hear what this
loving and mysterious silence of the eternal Word says to us.’ We need to
listen to this quietness of Jesus, and allow it to make its home in our minds
and hearts.
‘Create silence!’ How much we need this!
The world needs places, oases, sanctuaries, of silence.
And here comes a difficult question:
what has happened to silence in our churches? Many people ask this. When the
late Canon Duncan Stone, as a young priest in the 1940s, visited a parish in
the Highlands, he was struck to often find thirty or forty people kneeling
there in silent prayer. Now often there is talking up to the very beginning of
Mass, and it starts again immediately afterwards. But what is a church for, and
why do we go there? We go to meet the Lord and the Lord comes to meet us. ‘The
Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before him!’ said
the prophet Habakkuk. Surely the silent sacramental presence of the Lord in the
tabernacle should lead us to silence? We need to focus ourselves and put aside
distractions before the Mass begins. We want to prepare to hear the word of the
Lord in the readings and homily. Surely we need a quiet mind to connect to the
great Eucharistic Prayer? And when we receive Holy Communion, surely we want to
listen to what the Lord God has to say, ‘the voice that speaks of peace’? Being
together in this way can make us one – the Body of Christ – quite as
effectively as words.
A wise elderly priest of the diocese
said recently, ‘Two people talking stop forty people praying.’
‘Create silence!’ I don’t want to be
misunderstood. We all understand about babies. Nor are we meant to come and go
from church as cold isolated individuals, uninterested in one another. We want
our parishes to be warm and welcoming places. We want to meet and greet and
speak with one another. There are arrangements to be made, items of news to be
shared, messages to be passed. A good word is above the best gift, says the
Bible. But it is a question of where and when. Better in the porch than at the
back of the church. Better after the Mass in a hall or a room. There is a time
and place for speaking and a time and place for silence. In the church itself,
so far as possible, silence should prevail. It should be the norm before and
after Mass, and at other times as well. When there is a real need to say
something, let it be done as quietly as can be. At the very least, such silence
is a courtesy towards those who want to pray. It signals our reverence for the
Blessed Sacrament. It respects the longing of the Holy Spirit to prepare us to
celebrate the sacred mysteries. And then the Mass, with its words and music and
movement and its own moments of silence, will become more real. It will unite
us at a deeper level, and those who visit our churches will sense the Holy One
amongst us.
‘Create silence!’ It is an imperative.
May the Word coming forth from silence find our silence waiting for him like a
crib! ‘The devil’, said St Ambrose, ‘loves noise; Christ looks for silence.’
Yours sincerely in Him,
+ Hugh, O. S. B.
Bishop of Aberdeen
+ Hugh, O. S. B.
Bishop of Aberdeen
No comments:
Post a Comment