OUTLINE

Introduction

Silence and Encounter with Triune God

Silence in order To Hear God the Father

Silence in order to Hear the Son: the Word Made Man and Text

Silence I Order to Hear the Voice of the Holy Spirit

SILENCE

(Mt 6:6)

Introduction

Silence is a fundamental element in the life of every man, since only in silence can the voice of God be heard. Nevertheless, nowadays we can notice that there are few spaces where we can find silence because we live in a culture of noise. All kinds of noise surround us from every direction of modern cities, as well as the loud sounds of the electronic devices and of the modern means of communication.

It is a common phenomenon seeing on the streets of the cities persons with their cell phones, talking or sending or receiving messages, in such a way that their mind is converted into a warehouse of information, in which there is no space for silence. In this way, they receive messages from many persons, but find themselves closed to receive the messages of God.

Certainly, there exists a negative and destructive silence and a silence that is good and constructive. The first silence is that of one who does not talk, because either he has nothing to say, or because he is full of resentments and anger and these lead him to keep silent. In both cases, his heart is cold. St. Augustine explains it with the phrase:

The coldness of charity is the silence of the heart (…) 1

The positive and necessary silence is that which springs forth from the return to the heart, 2 from having gathered together one’s powers, and which becomes the indispensable condition for an encounter with God. Only he who is in silence can welcome His Word with love, meditate on it and bear abundant fruits (Jn 15:5).

On his part, Augustine also experienced dispersion and noise at the age of sixteen, when he arrived at Carthage, the great capital of North Africa. There he saw a cosmopolitan city, where everything was sound, noise and voices that enticed him to scatter himself, to go out of himself and throw himself into the realities of the world. At this stage of his life, Carthage was for St. Augustine, a frying-pan of forbidden loves, where the noise and dispersion of the city made him stay away from God.

I arrived at Carthage, and a swarm of impure loves sizzled around me from all parts. 3

For this reason, St. Augustine becomes aware that noise can entail three dangers. In the first place, noise can disperse persons making them live leaning completely towards the exterior, and forgetful of God and of themselves because they have abandoned their own heart where God dwells, and where each person must encounter himself:

You also listen. The Word Himself cries out for you to come back because you will find a place of imperturbable rest, where love is not abandoned, if He does not abandon us. 4

The second danger is being forgetful of God, in such a way that the desires and the goals of a human being are limited to the things of the earth. The dispersion caused by the noise allows a human being to be dragged by the current of the world, by its vanities, concupiscence, and pride. It is a noisy world that has placed its entire happiness in having, in self-fulfillment or in pleasure. Every human being that is dispersed in noise ends up losing the purpose of his life; and, if he does not decide to come out of the noise and dispersion, he can never attain happiness.

(…) with the weight of my miseries, I again fall into these earthly things and be reabsorbed by the usual things, becoming a slave to them. I cry much, but much more am I imprisoned by them. Such is the power of habit! Here can I be and I do not want; there I want but I cannot. I am unhappy in both cases. 5

A third danger is the gradual loss of one’s own identity. The person not being able to encounter himself in silence, ends up forgetting himself, what are his plans, purposes and desires, and accepting as true foreign desires and plans, without first thinking about them in his interior. It is necessary to return to one’s inner self in order to have, in the first place, a dialogue with oneself, and come to know oneself and to know what is the direction that from the heart one must follow.

And this is how St. Augustine did it in a manner that is well-known, as shown in his work the Soliloquies” in which he converses with his own reason in order to define the three essential pillars of his life and the life of every human being. In the first place, to make a plan of life, that is, to know the principles to which one must be faithful if one wishes to live with fullness one’s vocation to be a person. For St. Augustine his anthropological and spiritual plan is “that I may know myself, that I may know You” 6 (noverim me, noverim te). The progressive self-knowledge will help Augustine discover his own miseries and to resort with more confidence to the grace and power of God. This self-knowledge not only as a psychological process but as an integral psycho-spiritual process, is what will lead him to always maintain an attitude of humility, as an essential element of every relationship of man with God 7 (humility of mercy) and with his fellow men (compassionate humility) 8

In the second place, silence and the return to one’s inner self-help Augustine in defining his own identity, always in the face of God. That is why St. Augustine asks himself in his Confessions: I face myself and said to myself: Who are you?, and I answered: A man”. 9 And as such, as he points out in his Confessions, he becomes aware that he is limited and that he has a radical need of God, who appears, above all, as Redeemer, as an omnipotent God that reveals His greatness through mercy and coming to man to save him “ Say to my soul: I am your salvation.” 10 And this same thing he declares with joy in Enarrationes in Psalmos.

God speaks in secret, to many in the heart. In the midst of the great silence of the heart is produced a great sound when it says with a great voice: I am your salvation. Say to my soul (…) I am your salvation. 11

Finally, silence helps in living a life of commitment to that God Who dwells in silence in the inner self of every man. And this is also what Augustine does in Soliloquies as the fruit of his reflection from recollection and silence. That is why St. Augustine clearly points out that he desires only to serve God and love Him, above all things:

Now You alone I love, You alone I follow and seek, You alone I am ready to serve because You alone rule with justice; I wish to be under Your authority. 12

Therefore, only in silence can that full encounter with God be reached, where once the noise and the loud sounds disappear, the voice of God is heard.

Silence helps St. Augustine not only from the anthropological point of view of an encounter of man with himself, but it also has an important and Trinitarian level. We wish to return to the heart, to avoid dispersion caused by the noise, because we wish to hear the voice of the Father, Who invites us to hear His Word made Man, through the movements of the Holy Spirits.

Silence and Encounter with Triune God

It is necessary to start from an essential element. Silence is for St. Augustine, not an abstract element, in which what is being sought may be a heavenly peace obtained thanks to the absence of external sounds and disturbances. For St. Augustine, as it is for every traditional Christian spirituality, silence is not something absolute, but only a means, no doubt important, but only as a means that helps us to hear. We wish to enter into our heart, to leave behind all noise, to close the door of our inner chamber (Mt 6:6), not only because we seek that abstract peace to which we have made reference before, but because we wish to have an encounter with God, and in that loving encounter to be able to hear His Word.

Silence in order To Hear God the Father

A human being must keep silence in order to be able to hear the voice of the Father Who speaks to us through many ways, particularly through His Word made man.

Nevertheless, St. Augustine particularly stresses the fact that the Father speaks to us through creation. Just as there is a book in which is contained the Word of God, which are the Sacred Scriptures, God did not only write this book by means of His Finger (the Holy Spirit), 13 but that He has also written the immense book of creatures, in order to read in this book the presence and greatness of God:

The beauty itself of the universe is like a great book; contemplate, examine, read what is there above and below. So that you may know Him, God did not make letters of ink, but he placed before your eyes the creatures that He made. Why do you still look for more eloquent testimony? Heaven and earth cry out to you; ‘We are God’s handiwork’. 14

In this sense the process of secularization in during which the world has become a means of acquiring raw materials, during which nature is no longer seen as way of seeing God, human being can be tempted to forget God. In this way, the entire universe would no longer be an impressive sign of the Beauty and of the Infinite Wisdom of God, but only as series of material elements, more or less autonomous, which have gradually come to existence by chance.

St. Augustine would invite us to listen not only with our ears but also with our eyes, what all the creatures that surround us are telling us and that they invite us to praise God. As Psalm 18 (19) says: “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 18 [19]:1). When St. Augustine comments on this verse of Psalm 18 (19), he indicates that the biblical text does not speak only of the firmaments but also of the saints:

All things were made by Him, and without Him, nothing was made. The heavens announced, announce and will announce the glory of God. They will announce, I say, the heavens, that is, the saints, the glory of God raised over the earth. Bringing God, thundering with the commandments, shining with their wisdom, they will announce, as I said, the glory of God; by it, we are saved, being unworthy. 15

In fact, for St. Augustine, all created things are messengers that do not speak to man of no other thing than the love of God and invite him to praise God his Creator. And Augustine points it out in his Confessions:

Lord, you wounded my heart with Your word and I loved You. But heaven and earth and everything that is in them keep telling me from all parts that I should love You. And they never cease saying it to all, so that they are inexcusable. 16

In reality, all things of the universe must invite the believer to praise, contemplate the marvelous spectacle that the works of God offer us in many occasions: the beauty of daybreak, of the landscape, the perfection of created beings, etc. That is why St. Augustine never stops praising God through the admirable spectacle that creatures offer us:

Your creature has become a spectacle for me; I have search in the work its Maker, and in created things their Creator.17

In fact, the order and beauty of the universe give praise to God. The one who praises God with his lips and his heart joins in the symphony that all creatures direct to God, their Creator. Only those who live distracted, dispersed by noise, are those who do not praise God. He who lives in silence can hear, with the ears of the heart, the great song of praise of the creatures, joins to it with his own voice. Thus St. Augustine invites us to hear how all creatures, from the smallest to the greatest, raise to God their song of praise, to which man unites himself when he acknowledges the greatness and magnificence of God:

All this framework of the universe, this beauty in perfect order that rises from the lowest to the highest and goes down from the highest to the lowest, without interruption, variably controlled, everything praises God. Why does everything praise God? Because when you see it and find it beautiful, in it you praise God. The beauty of the earth is like a voice of the mute earth. 18

And the greatness of God is reflected even in the smallest and most inferior of creation. Hence, man is invited never to lose the capacity of amazement, not to be carried away by atheistic and pseudo-scientific currents that try to explain everything by means of reason, without being aware that faith has its own reasons, and that a purified and humble reason, must lead man to an encounter with God.

In this way St. Augustine was amazed even by the perfection of the parts of a small worm, knowing that it was created by God, Who was at the same time the one who governed the clouds of heaven.

Consider everything, praise everything. He who arranged the parts of a tiny worm, does he not govern the clouds of heaven? 19

Silence in order to Hear the Son: the Word Made Man and Text

Silence is therefore necessary in order to hear the voice of Christ. On his part, St. Augustine was convinced that Christ is continually speaking because He is: “the Word of God that does not keep silent, even though He is not always heard.” 20 Christ is, therefore, the Word that God directs on every occasion to man to call him to conversion and salvation.

Only in silence can the Word of God which is found in the Sacred Scripture be received, in order to know the will of God and prepare ourselves to obey it. Therefore, the process of the Augustinian Lectio Divina leads us to receive that Word and pray for the grace to be able to fulfill what God will ask of us at a given time of our life.

(Steps of Lectio Divina)

Silence I Order to Hear the Voice of the Holy Spirit

For St. Augustine silence is fundamental for welcoming the voice of the Holy Spirit Who

speaks in us. It is true that He helps us to hear the voice of the Son in His Word, in the Sacred Scripture, but for St. Augustine the Holy Spirit, as the love between the Father and the Son, is also their continual presence in our hearts, and He is the one Who in certain moments, moves, inspires and directs us to do good. Certainly it is about a matter that we shall deal with later when we talk about the spiritual accompaniment, but for the moment let the following suffice.

St. Augustine distinguishes in his work, two types of promptings (he calls them admonitiones) that come from the Holy Spirit - the external and internal. 21 The external are those that come to our mind and heart when we contemplate the events of our life or of the progress of the world. These elements make us feel that God is saying something to us by means these events. It is an invitation to act, to pray or to be grateful. Only he who lives in silence can hear this prompting of the Spirit. Surely when the invitation which is believed to have been heard from the Holy Spirit, involves great changes in our life, or in that of others, needs to be discerned, very possibly with the help of another person, in order to avoid falling into errors and self-deceptions.

On the other hand, the internal promptings are those moments in which, when we are in silence, in many occasions when we are in an attitude of prayer, the memory of a text from the Sacred Scripture comes up, as from the bottom of our being, which becomes a message of God for us at that moment:

But a certain admonition, that acts in us, that invites us to think about God, to search for Him, and the desire Him enthusiasm comes to us from the very fountain of Truth. 22

Once again, in order to be able to hear this voice of God, it is necessary to be in silence and be attentive so that the messages of God may not escape us. It is about a light that illumines our interior and leads us to the knowledge of the wisdom of God and enlightens our darkness:

Yes, He is the fountain, He is the light; because Your light makes us see the light. If He is the fountain and He is the light, very rightfully, He is also the Wisdom, because He satisfies the soul that hungers for knowledge; and he who understands is illumined by a certain light that is not material or corporal but interior. Because it exists, brethren, an interior light that those who do not understand do not possess. 23

This advice, this voice, and light is no other than the voice of Holy Spirit that we can receive in silence.

For Your Meditation

1. Do I live dispersed in the world with great noise in my life?

2. When I am in silence, what do I experience in my inner self?

3. Has there been a moment during which I have felt the prompting of the Holy Spirit in my heart? What have I done with it?

4. What word of God is maintaining my life?

5. Do I frequently read and meditate the Scriptures?

6. What is my attitude in the face of the beauty of God shown in creation?

Biblical Text: (Mt 6:6).

But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.

Text from St. Augustine (En. Ps. 38, 20).

God speaks in secret, and to many in the heart. In the midst of the great silence of the heart is produced a great sound when it says with great voice: I am your salvation. Say to my soul (…) I am your salvation.

Text of the Constitutions (96)

The brother is to have a high regard for what is called our particular observances, as established means for fostering fraternal life and for personal sanctification. By means of them, the spirit of the liturgy is in a certain way prolonged over the course of the day, and the community, living in piety and silence, can create the proper atmosphere for a life of prayer and for life in common.

Text from the Magisterium (Vita Consecrata 38)

The call to holiness is accepted and can be cultivated only in the silence of adoration before the infinite transcendence of God: “We must confess that we all have need of this silence, filled with the presence of him who is adored: in theology, so as to exploit fully its own sapiential and spiritual soul; in prayer, so that we may never forget that seeing God means coming down the mountain with a face so radiant that we are obliged to cover it with a veil (cf. Ex 34:33); in commitment, so that we will refuse to be locked in a struggle without love and forgiveness. All, believers and non-believers alike, need to learn a silence that allows the Other to speak when and how he wishes and allows us to understand his words.”

Recollect Text

And thus, my dear sisters, to be silent and to observe the silence that we profess is the fruit and the most faithful companion of peace and patience, and one of the principal tools for preserving the continual assistance of the Lord; and the way of maintaining the consolation of His divine presence and that of His most holy Mother our Lady.

MOTHER MARIANA DE SAN JOSE, Spiritual Testimony

Translated by: Fr. Emilio Larlar, OAR

Edited by: Fr. Francisco Antonio, OAR

1 En. Ps. 37, 14.

2 Cfr. Io. Ev. Tr. 18, 10.

3 Conf. 3, 1.

4 Conf. 4, 16.

5 Conf. 10, 65.

6 Sol. 2, 1.

7 Man is a beggar of God: S. 56, 9.

8 S. 137, 2: You are not ordered: ‘Be less than what you are’, but ‘admit what you are’. Know that you are weak, know that your man, know that you are a sinner. Know that He is the one who justifies you, knows that you are blemished. Let the stain of your heart appear in your confession and you will belong the flock of Christ.

9 Conf.10, 9.

10 Conf. 1, 5.

11 En. Ps. 38, 20.

12 Sol. 1, 5.

13 En Ps. 8, 7.

14 S. 68, 6.

15 En. Ps. 18, 2, 3.

16 Conf. 10, 8.

17 Ep. 142, 10.

18 Ep. 144, 13.

19 Ep. 148, 10.

20 S. 51, 17.

21 S. 85, 1.

22 De Beata Vita, 4, 35.

23 En. Ps. 41, 2.