In our Gospel reading today, it states that Jesus rose early before dawn and went off to a deserted place to pray. The words that he preached in the synagogues of the nearby villages and the manner in which he able to drive out demons were born out of the intimacy he experienced in silence with the Father. On Saturday mornings, I meet with a group of men through ZOOM, most of whom were my parishioners at one time or another. I know that many have complained about ZOOM, but I appreciate the way it has helped keep my connected with people all over the country, and sometimes all over the world, in ways that I could not have done in person in the pre-COVID-19 era. In fact, this past week, I had conferences on ZOOM that originated in Milwaukee and Philadelphia, conferences that were very helpful to me.
Anyhow, in this men’s group, we are reading the book THE POWER OF SILENCE by Cardinal Robert Sarah. Before serving in the Vatican, Cardinal Sarah was the Bishop of Conakry, Guinea, one of the poorest countries in the world that is majority Muslim and that has a very small Christian minority. In fact, when I served in Guinea with the Peace Corps, I lived on an island of about 10,000 inhabitants and I was the only Christian on the entire island. Cardinal Sarah mentioned how his predecessor Archbishop Raymond-Marie Tchidimbo spent almost nine years in a “sordid prison.” He stated that the only way Archbishop Thchidimbo was able to survive was thanks to an intimate encounter with God in the silence, enabling him to believe that he would persevere and enabling him to face his daily trials in serenity. I love this statement made by Cardinal Sarah: “The silence of God is an illumination, simple and sublime, little and grandiose.”
Listening to God in silence, learning from God in silence: these are perhaps a lost art. May we practice the silence of our faith. May we learn from God in silence.
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