Season of Lent - Power of Silence

Lord Jesus, I want to remain centered in and focused in you. Not just during this time of Lent, but every moment of every day of my temporal existence here in this place. I want to walk step by step in your eternal joy, listening carefully to your teaching, watching closely your every move, becoming more and more who you created me to be. I want to be your disciple, to follow you any and everywhere. I want to be acutely aware of my alien status here in this place at this time, but also keenly sensitive to your calling and sending wishes as I do my best to serve, love, live fully. Lord Jesus, I am yours. Thank you for inviting me into your Presence. Help me to welcome others as willingly and freely as you welcome me to your Throne of Grace. I love you Lord, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Help me to keep that in the forefront of all my being and doing. Amen.

Isaiah 53 (msg)

Who believes what we’ve heard and seen? Who would have thought God’s saving power would look like this? The servant grew up before God – a scrawny seedling, a scrubby plant in a parched field. There was nothing attractive about him, nothing to cause us to take a second look. He was looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand. One look at him and people turned away. We looked down on him, thought he was scum. But the fact is, it was our pains he carried – our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us. We thought he brought it on himself, that God was punishing him for his own failures. But it was our sins that did that to him, that ripped and tore and crushed him – our sins! He took the punishment, and that made us whole. Through his bruises we get healed. We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost. We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way. And God has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong, on him, on him.

He was beaten, he was tortured, but he didn’t say a word.

Like a lamb taken to be slaughtered and like a sheep being sheared, he took it all in silence…

excerpt from: Henri J.M. Nouwen, “The Way of the Heart”

The Desert Fathers praise silence as the safest way to God. “I have often repented of having spoken,” Arsenius said, “but never of having remained silent (43).” Silence is an indispensable discipline in the spiritual life (44). Over the last few decades we have been inundated by a torrent of words. Wherever we go we are surrounded by words: words softly whispered, loudly proclaimed, or angrily screamed; words spoken, recited, or sung; words on records, in books, on walls, or in the sky; words in many sounds, many colors, or many forms; words to be heard, read, seen, or glanced at; words which flicker off and on, move slowly, dance, jump or wiggle. Words, words, words! They form the floor, the walls, and the ceiling of our existence. It has not always been this way. There was a time not too long ago without radios and televisions, stop signs, yield signs, merge signs, bumper stickers, and the ever-present announcements indicating price increases or special sales. There was a time without the advertisements which now cover whole cities with words. Recently I was driving through Los Angeles, and suddenly I had the strange sensation of driving through a huge dictionary. Wherever I looked there were words trying to take my eyes from the road. They said, “Use me, take me, buy me, drink me, smell me, touch me, kiss me, sleep with me.” In such a world who can maintain respect for words? All this is to suggest that words, my own included, have lost their creative power. Their limitless multiplication has made us lose confidence in words and caused us to think, more often that not, “They are just words.” – Preachers preach their sermons week after week and year after year. But their parishioners remain the same and often think, “They are just words (45-46).” - - - - - - - The Word of God is born out of the eternal silence of God, and it is to this Word out of silence that we want to be witnesses. Silence is the home of the word. Silence gives strength and fruitfulness to the word. We can even say that words are meant to disclose the mystery of the silence from which they come. (Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu: “The purpose of a fish trap is to catch fish and when the fish are caught, the trap is forgotten. The purpose of a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits. When the rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten. The purpose of the word is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to.”) “I would like to talk to the man who has forgotten words.” That could have been said by one of the Desert Fathers. For them, the word is the instrument of the present world and silence is the mystery of the future world. If a word is to bear fruit it must be spoken from the future world into the present world. The Desert Fathers therefore considered their going into the silence of the desert to be a first step into the future world. From that world their words could bear fruit because there they could be filled with the power of God’s silence (48-49).

Habakkuk 2:20 (msg)

“But oh! GOD is in His holy Temple! Quiet everyone – a holy silence. Listen!”