There is love in the silence.

One of the most profound moments of my prayer life – a moment when I knew God was present – was precisely when I heard God’s “voice” the least. 

On a long, silent retreat, I found myself in a deep stretch of silence: silence exteriorly, silence interiorly, and silence from God. You might think this would be peaceful, but at first it wasn’t – it was unsettling, and I wondered where God was in it all. 

The grace came one day during the retreat as I was sitting in front of a tabernacle in a small chapel. I didn’t “feel” any more of God when this grace came. I didn’t “feel” any less silent. It was a “knowing” grace – more an intellectual grace than anything – but still, it changed the way I experienced the silent exterior, silent interior, and silent God. 

As I sat before the tabernacle, listening to God’s silence and seeming lack of presence, the words came to my mind, “There is love in the silence.” I stopped. I knew. “God is love.” If God is silent, it doesn’t mean he’s not with me. He is a person, and we can’t feel persons. If my mom is sitting behind me and I don’t recognize it, does that mean she isn’t with me and isn’t actively loving me? No, not at all.

If God is in, around, and all through me, but isn’t allowing me to feel anything of that presence, does that mean he isn’t with me and isn’t loving me? No, not at all!

The Lord cries out today, “…the sheep hear his voice, as the shepherd calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.” 

Our hearts yearn for the voice of Christ.

We want nothing more than to hear that voice – a voice that knows us and loves us.

If you’ve ever been apart from a loved one for a long time, you know the experience of hearing that voice for the first time. It is like a breath of fresh air – like a glass of cool water on a hot day… There’s really no great way to describe how refreshing it is. It is almost new, but still old, an old nostalgia comes back.

The voice of Jesus… how do we describe this? For the most part, even most saints don’t hear it (audibly), but anyone who has a consistent life of prayer I think knows and understands when that voice speaks (even inaudibly). It is a calm, refreshing, new, knowing – words fail – sort of voice. 

I have come, over the course of time since the grace of that retreat, to trust the love in the silence far more than any “voice” I hear in my mind in prayer. Do I believe that God speaks to us in our minds and hearts as we pray? Certainly, I have many experiences of that. But do I also recognize that I can make up words and thoughts and unintentionally put words in the mouth of God? Yes, I realize that too. 

But I can’t “produce” silence, because it is simply an absence. And in that absence, there is an unmistakable presence of God’s love. It exists with me apart from any experience of my senses – interior and exterior.

Praise God for his silence, his silent presence, and his silent voice.

There is love in the silence. 

Recently, I was reading a commentary on the Gospel of Luke by the Anglican scripture scholar, N.T. Wrigh, and the following line really resonated with me:

If the story of the prodigal son has a claim to be the finest story Jesus ever told, the tale of the two on the road to Emmaus must have an equal claim to be the finest scene Luke ever sketched…At the level of drama it has everything. Sorrow, suspense, puzzlement, gradual dawning of light; then, in the second half, unexpected actions, astonished recognition, a flurry of excitement and activity. It is both a wonderful, unique, spellbinding tale, and also a model (and Luke surely knew this) for a great deal of what being a Christian, from that day to this, is all about. (Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2004), 292–293.)

The Gospel account of the two disciples going to Emmaus is one that I always look forward to reading, and these words from N.T. Wright put words to why I (and so many) are drawn to this passage.

I am always struck by the candor of the two disciples as they speak to Jesus about Jesus (as they did not yet know it was Him to whom they were speaking).  They said: “we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel.” (Lk 24:21) Their hope about Jesus, that He might finally be the Messiah, seemed now to be dead, just as Jesus was dead.  Jesus then takes the opportunity to present to them the story of salvation, the details with which they were no doubt familiar, but Jesus connects those details in a way that makes it clear that Jesus was indeed the Messiah.  Their hope had not been in vain!  No doubt Jesus stirred something within them, as seen in the reaction to Him as He prepared to part company, urging Him: “Stay with us, for it is evening and the day is almost over.” (Lk 24:29) Then, as Jesus breaks and blessed the bread, Luke writes that “their eyes were opened and they recognized Him.” (Lk 24:31) The hope that they thought dead was revived, which meant that everything He had said about Himself and what He would accomplish in bringing about salvation was true.  I have therefore chosen the following invocation from the Litany of the Sacred Heart to connect with this scene from the Gospel:

Heart of Jesus, Salvation of those who hope in thee, have mercy on us

During this Easter Season, we are invited to renew our faith that all that Jesus did and said is true.  Nothing is more remarkable than what happened on that Easter Sunday, and if He was able to accomplish that miraculous feat, then all of His promises can be trusted, not the least of which the one He gives to us when speaking about the Eucharist, which Pope Pius XII calls a gift of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to the Church.  Here is that promise from Jesus about the Eucharist:

he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live for ever. (Jn 6:54-58)

As I write this, I don’t have access to my copy of St. Bonaventure’s life of St. Francis, so the continuation of those reflections will have to wait a week.

The First Reading for this weekend’s Mass, however, provides us with a good scriptural reality to ponder. St. Peter, in his speech on the day of Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles, quotes Psalm 16 to teach about Jesus. This quotation is significant, and it begins to teach us the powerful and profound truth that Jesus has fulfilled the scriptures of the Old Testament. 

We read in the Gospel of Luke that after Jesus rose from the dead he appeared to his apostles in the upper room and “he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures…” (Luke 24:44-45). Everything written about him in the Psalms must be fulfilled.

When we think of the psalms, we generally think of long sung prayers from a book in the Old Testament. We might think of a song between the two readings at Mass – generally kind of hard to hear or understand. We might even love to pray the Psalms and think of them as beautiful prayers to God. All of that is true, yet it is good for us to remember and read them also as strikingly accurate prophecies of the Messiah, Jesus Christ – words that he himself prayed. 

Really, the book of the Psalms is the most-quoted book of the New Testament. The early Christians and the Apostles especially, with their minds opened to the ways that the Old Testament scriptures had been fulfilled, saw in the Psalms a rich prefiguring of Jesus. Perhaps most poignantly is the great Psalm 22 which we hear quoted by Jesus himself on the cross, “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me.” If you read through the rest of that psalm, you will see that the whole of it really describes in detail the sufferings Jesus would endure during his passion. 

On a happier note, in this Easter season and particularly with today’s first reading in mind, the Psalms also prefigure the resurrection of Christ. We read in the Psalms about how God triumphs over worldly struggles and even over death itself. The quotation of today’s first reading is, again, from Psalm 16. One could, before Christ, read this psalm about God’s promise that he would take care of the one who takes refuge in him. After Christ, however, we see that the words of this psalm are clearly oriented toward the future resurrection. 

Here is the section of the Psalm that St. Peter quotes. Read it as though you were Christ preparing for his passion in the Agony in the Garden:

“I saw the Lord ever before me,
with him at my right hand I shall not be disturbed.
Therefore my heart has been glad and my tongue has exulted;
my flesh, too, will dwell in hope,
because you will not abandon my soul to the netherworld,
nor will you suffer your holy one to see corruption.
You have made known to me the paths of life;
you will fill me with joy in your presence.”