Be Still

The Rosary. We haven't been friends for most of my life. Growing up, it was the device by which my mom tortured us at the start of family vacations. It was the thing we did when someone died. It was how I spent the 20 minutes after recess during my 5th grade year. But in the past few years, my heart has been softened to the beauty of this devotion. I have begun to understand why we pray it, how to pray it, and seen the fruit of this prayer. This past Lent, I vowed to pray the Rosary every day, a vow that frankly seemed impossible and seemed like immersion therapy (see note on family vacations). But deciding to commit to this was one of the greatest blessings of my life. And it wasn't so in the ways I would have expected. I didn't finish Lent with a new and incredibly deep devotion to the Blessed Mother. I haven't decided to convert the whole world to Rosary-praying. But what I did come to appreciate was SILENCE.

As I replaced the listening of music during my drive to work with the saying of the Rosary, I began to recognize the profound lack of silence in my life. I struggled with the absence of sound. I had to learn how to unplug. I had to wean myself off of my incessant noise.

I think if we were to be honest, we would recognize the scary reality that silence is almost a foreign experience for us. A rare occurrence. We, as a culture, are constantly plugged in, entertained, multi-tasking. Our minds are unceasingly flooded with thoughts. Our days are exhaustively noisy. And in my time during Lent, what I discovered was that my soul was starving for the nourishment that comes from sitting quietly with the Lord. Our souls? They long for rest. They hunger for stillness. They are desperate for silence.

If we think about all the places in which silence is enforced, we can begin to understand the value of this noiselessness. Silence is demanded in libraries so people can focus on and retain the information that they are reading. Silence was enforced during tornado drills in school so that chaos and talking would not inhibit the listening of instructions for one’s rescue. Silence is requested in movie theaters so the audience can fully enter into the plot and not be distracted from understanding the story and its characters. Silence is commanded at museums so that people can fully engage in the beauty that they behold.

In our spiritual life, we NEED silence. We need silence to focus. To retain. To hear words of rescue. To more fully understand the story. To behold the beauty of our God.

As a people surrounded by strong and heavy winds, earthquakes, and fire, we must be a people that seek to hear our God as he speaks to us in a tiny whispering sound (1 Kings 19:11-13). For in this tiny whisper, in the escape into silence, we find him beckoning us to focus on HIM and the mission he has entrusted to each one of us. The Psalmist declares with authority that “those whose steps are guided by the Lord, whose way God approves, may stumble, but they will never fall for the Lord holds their hand” (Psalm 37:23). But this rescue, this mercy, this faithfulness of the Lord is only known to those who commit to “be still before the Lord; wait for God” (Psalm 37:7). In a world that seeks to distract us from knowing the Lord and beholding his glory, Pope Benedict XVI instructs us that in “retiring into silence and solitude, man, so to speak, is ‘exposed’ to reality in his nakedness. This allows man to experience the fullness, the presence of God, of the most real Reality that there is, and that is beyond the dimension of the senses.”

The Lord wants to reveal to us his deep love. He wants us to know our identity and purpose. He wants us to be convinced of his faithfulness and confident in his promises. He wants to speak to us as specifically as he did to the prophets. He wants to console us as deeply as he did to the psalmists. He wants to empower us as boldly as he did for the apostles. But he can only do this if we intentionally seek the silence in which he speaks to us best. As St. Faustina wrote, “A silent soul is strong; no adversities will harm it if it perseveres in silence. The silent soul is capable of attaining close union with God. It lives almost always under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. God works in a silent soul without hindrance.”

This week, let us be bold. Let us fast from TV, from music, from Facebook, from whatever has become incessant noise for us. Let us make silence a priority that we might make JESUS our priority. Lord, we welcome silence this week to show that we welcome you. As we quiet even our talkative souls, we seek to show you our deep desire to listen to your voice. We wait for you.