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.