“ Intelligent Silence is the Mother of Prayer”
Silence is good. We are meant to experience silence in the normal, everyday routine of life so that we can enter into uniquely human experiences. It is essential for each of us to safeguard and search after the times and places where we can experience the goodness of silence. Silence is beautiful. We are thirsting to get away from noise and distraction and enter into the beauty of silence. In many ways, the need to “get away from it all” is a hunger for silence. Our very being cries out to experience peace and quiet. Silence is holy. When we approach the Lord in the silence of our hearts He hears us. He is constantly speaking to us each and every day. But he will not shout over the noise that we allow to drone him out. It’s important for each of us to take some time each day to enter into the presence of Almighty God. But above all, when we enter into the sanctuary of the Most Holy Presence of the Lord of Hosts, we approach his throne in humble silence. “Silence, all mankind, in the presence of the Lord God, for he stirs forth from His holy dwelling” Zachariah 1:7 When we come to church, we come to encounter and to adore the Living God. It is natural to want to greet others and catch up on current events in the lives of friends and parishioners. As brothers and sisters in Christ, it is a way of life for us to come to church and pray. Knowing the great difficulty it is for each one of us to find silent moments, it becomes a crucial obligation of charity to one another to help safeguard that sanctuary of silence before the Lord that we call the church. Let us seek the Lord together in silence that we may hear His Voice and receive His Word. As we do this together, as we fall on our knees before the majesty of god, united in the silent bond of prayer, we will delve into such a deep fraternal bond of faith to which no amount of conversation, or handshaking or reveling could ever take us. Christ the Holy Silence. Christ reminds us that silence is not just the absence of sound, but the profoundly full language of Heaven, for St. Isaac says, “Silence is the language of the age to come”. May we , as he did, love silence above all things. Upon entering the church, we should maintain reverent silence so that we are at peace within ourselves and with others.