Welcome To The Blessed Quiet
Sometimes worship looks like Alleluia, and sometimes it looks like a sigh of love. Welcome to the blessed quiet, this is the silent side of Heaven.
I know about the shouts of joy, I’ve heard about the exuberant unending praise. But I also know the wordless wonder, what it means to remain in awe, unable to utter a single thing. Sometimes worship looks like Alleluia, and sometimes it looks like a sigh of love.
Welcome to the blessed quiet, this is the silent side of Heaven.
Here, love is a piercing gaze, a deep longing inhale with a sweet soft exhale. Praise here is in calming silence. Absorbing the interior disposition of eternal solitude, dwelling in the beautiful bliss of the blessed quiet.
I wrote the phrases above, after a beautiful experience I had in prayer. It got me thinking about how important maintaining an interior silence is.
Maintaining holy silence is vital. - Do you know that there is a level of prayer called “Prayer of The Quiet?” The soul is filled with such sweetness and consolation from God that it can do nothing else, but remain quiet. Even talking disturbs the interior peacefulness, and tranquility that the soul feels while absorbed in this state of prayer.
“Sacred silence, laden with the adored presence, opens the way to mystical silence, full of loving intimacy.” - Cardinal Sarah from the book “The Power of Silence Against The Dictatorship of Noise”
One of my favorite elements of The Latin Mass is the sacred silence. There’s something so beautiful about a worship so deep, that it is done in silence. The Tridentine Mass is mystical.
Image I took at The Rorate Caeli Mass.
Mother Teresa says, “We need to find God, and He cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.”
Oftentimes, in order to avoid our emotions and avoid confronting ourselves, our sins, and our sufferings, we make ourselves extremely busy, constantly inundating ourselves with noise, and with distractions. This eventually backfires, as worldly noise and holy silence are incompatible. A soul cannot grow in the love of God, without spending quiet time in prayer, in interior silence. A soul who is not advancing is backsliding. You’re either ascending, or descending. Time spent in adoration before The Blessed Sacrament is done in peace; we adore God and listen to hear Him speak tenderly to our hearts in holy silence.
We can also reflect on the importance of “suffering well.” Making yourself busy, and filling your life with noise to try and avoid suffering, is not “suffering well” but rather suffering poorly. We are not to run from the Cross, but rather embrace it.
“Our greatest cross is the fear of crosses. . . . We have not the courage to carry our cross, and we are very much mistaken; for, whatever we do, the cross holds us tight – we cannot escape from it. What, then, have we to lose? Why not love our crosses and make use of them to take us to Heaven? But, on the contrary, most men turn their backs upon crosses and fly before them. The more they run, the more the cross pursues them, the more it strikes and crushes them with burdens. . . . If you were wise, you would go to meet it like St. Andrew, who said, when he saw the cross prepared for him and raised up into the air, “Hail O good cross! O admirable cross! O desirable cross! Receive me into thine arms, withdraw me from among men, and restore me to my Master, who redeemed me through thee.” - Saint John Vianney
The Cross detaches us from the world, and plunges us into deep prayer and solitude with our Savior. How many people only turn to God when they are undergoing a trial? God becomes all you need, once you realize God is all you truly have.
The only way to The Resurrection, to the beauty that is Easter Sunday, is to first endure The Cross, to endure Good Friday. What do we find in the middle of these two days? We find Holy Saturday, when all was quiet; when there was a great stillness upon the face of the earth.
We have now entered into the Lenten season. This is the perfect time to practice holy silence. Stop distracting yourself. Embrace The Cross, get rid of the noise, and enter into silence. I’ve experienced the beauty of the blessed quiet, and I wish for you to experience the same. I encourage you to enter into holy silence with the Lord this Lent, and thus emerge from tomb into the Easter Season; in a deeper union with The Lord. Glowing in the glorious light of The Resurrection, dwelling in the blessed quiet.
Cultivate holy silence with The Lord, and let Him welcome you into the sacred space that is the blessed quiet.
Serviam.
February 23rd is The Feast Day of Saint Polycarp.
“Let us then persevere unceasingly in our hope, and in the pledge of righteousness, that is in Christ Jesus.” - Saint Polycarp