June 28, 2004  

"Silence"

The first pillar of contemplative spirituality is silence.  Silence is so important.  God said in Hosea, "I will lure you."  He's not just going to call us; He's going to lure us.  Sometimes we need to be baited because we are busy about other things, not necessarily busy about our Father's business.  "So I will lure her into the desert and  speak to her heart" (Hos 2:16).   He will speak to us in the desert.  Not in the noise or the humdrum or the busyness but in the silence.  He's a lover.  He wants to be alone with us. 

This type of prayer doesn't have to take long, but if we can devote twenty or thirty minutes alone with God each day it would be very fruitful.  "There I will speak to your heart."  God is heart.  Jesus said to St. Margaret Mary, "The thoughts of My heart are to all generations."  But we need the silence to pick up those heart thoughts.  When we're in love, we know the other person's heart.  We can pick it up.  It's heart-to-heart communication.  Scripture tells us that listening is not an option.  "Listen, that you may have life" (Is 55:3).  So if we're going to come alive in union with this life and become this vast army, we need to learn to listen because this is where God says that we will receive life.  Jesus said, "I came that they might have life and have it to the full" (Jn 10:10).  On Mount Tabor, we hear the Father saying, "This is My Son, My Beloved. Listen to Him" (Mk 9:7).  He wants us to have life.   

When the Apostles asked Jesus how to pray, He said, "When you pray, go into your room, close your door and pray to the Father in private" (Mt 6:6).  We are to go into our room, not someone else's.  We are to shut the door to all the distractions, all the things that we need to do, and all the things that we didn't get done yet.  It's hard to shut the door.  Simple little words, but just try it. Shut the door and pray to the Father alone in secret-privately, intimately, in the presence of pure love.  This is how Jesus prayed.  Scripture is filled with Jesus going off to these desert places, mountaintops, lake places-anywhere that He could be alone.  Sometimes He'd have to rise very early in the morning before the Apostles got up, but He always had this alone time with the Father.

Scripture says that "He spent the night in communion with God" (Lk 6:12).  Jesus wasn't doing a lot of the talking to the Father.  He wasn't doing any preaching.  He wasn't teaching, healing, or delivering.  He was the child, receiving from the Father.  This is why He could give all that He received in His prayer away day after day after day.  We can't give something that we don't have.  Jesus was receiving so He could give it all away.

When Jesus was led into the desert to be tempted by Satan, one of His answers to Satan is very important for us.  When Satan wanted Jesus to turn the stones into bread, naturally speaking, that was probably a pretty good temptation.  I imagine Jesus was pretty hungry after the forty days.  Jesus' reply was, "Scripture has it, ‘Not on bread alone shall man live' " (Lk 4:4).    If every word that comes forth from the mouth of God is giving us life, that should be a motive in itself for us to want to listen.  "Lord, please speak to me.  Speak to me. I don't care what You say, just speak to me."

Excerpt from "Having the Heart of God," Escondido, CA, 2002.