MARCH-APRIL 2024

Editor's desk François-Marie Héraud

Mary, Mother of Silence

Sometimes, there is silence around us. At first glance, it is surprising and throws us off balance, because it is so different from what we are used to. Therefore, silence can be scary, disturbing and challenging for us. So often, we do everything to avoid it, such as, an impromptu conversation, having the radio on from morning to night or by playing music in tiny earphones to isolate us from it. All this to fill a void, to hide us from the silence. An emptiness where you do not want to be alone, for fear that something will happen, that memories or difficult questions will resurface. Because true silence allows neither masks nor gimmicks. On the contrary, it engages us. But how then do we accept it, savour it? Why do we seek it, love it?
 
If silence reveals a void, can it not also be a path for those who know how to live with it? How many times have we found ourselves immersed in a cacophony of external noise or buried internally under so much agitation and worry? It is then that silence allows us to find our way, to find our true selves.
 
Learning from silence is not just enduring it or living with it occasionally, but rather choosing it, day after day, above all else. Because silence allows us to seize the day from a different angle, that of what I am, of what lives within me. Curiously, in its own way, silence soothes and opens us to a new perspective. A look that dispels fear and transfigures those who allow themselves to be enveloped in this way.
 
Under the prism of silence, listening can then encounter the words. A word with a new, deeper, enriched scope. Welcomed, and not just heard like the multitude of surrounding sounds, the word nourishes, blossoms and helps us grow. From there, what could have gone unnoticed, finds a place and allows an unsuspected step forward. The word can then bear fruit.

“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” (Luke 1:38)

A wonderful exchange where the child learns, where the one who seeks finds and the one, who thought he was alone and abandoned, discovers a reassuring Presence with him. “The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters never fail.” (Isaiah 58:11) As the days go by, I so desperately need to remember how precious silence is. Mary, Mother of Silence, teach me this mindset to welcome others. Place in my heart the words that you spoke so that these words can become more and more my own, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” (Luke 1:38) 

Wishing you and yours a Happy and Blessed Easter!

United in prayer!

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Paul-André Durocher - Archbishop of Gatineau

Silence

God’s silence. For most people, the first perspective will evoke positive experiences, moments when we managed to break the cycle of our noisy, busy life and take time to simply sit quietly in silence. The second perspective, however, is deeply problematic. What do we do when we experience the silence of God? What can we do when we feel that God is distant, uncaring and unresponsive? How do we deal with the silence of God?

A Bible passage comes to mind whenever I think of God’s silence. I refer to the moment in Matthew’s narrative of the Passion when, on the Cross, Jesus cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46) It seems that, in His suffering, Jesus experienced the silence of God. People ask how this can be, if He was expecting to rise again from the dead as He had prophesied. All I can say is this, it is one thing to proclaim your faith, it is another to live it in the depths of a great trial. We know that Jesus was tempted in the desert. Perhaps, He was tempted again on the Cross - tempted to think that His relationship with the Father was just the fruit of His imagination; tempted to doubt all His convictions; tempted to lose hope that the Father would conquer sin and death through Him. We know this temptation, for we have also been through trials when it was nearly impossible to continue believing and hoping and loving.

If Jesus was tempted, He overcame that temptation as He had in the desert. We can see this when we note that His cry was actually a quote from Scripture, more precisely the opening of Psalm 22 (21), “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.” Doesn’t this sound like a psalm of hopelessness, a cry of despair as the psalmist experiences God’s silence? (verses 1–2)

Yet, the psalm changes track halfway through. The psalmist suddenly exclaims, “You who fear the Lord, praise Him! [...] He did not hide His face from me, but heard when I cried to Him.” (verses 23–24) Though God had been silent, He had been listening attentively to the psalmist’s cry. It is as if God was like a really good friend who does not interrupt us as we pour our hearts out. His silence allows us to speak, to cry, to tell our pain and our anguish. The psalmist discovered that, though God was silent, God was listening. And God answered, perhaps in ways that the psalmist had not expected.

“In returning and rest, you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” (Isaiah 30:15)

We can be sure that, if Jesus quoted the first line of the psalm, He continued praying it to the end, remembering with the psalm’s author that the Father is present and listens to the cry of the poor. So, there is no contradiction when, in his Gospel, Luke tells us that, just before dying, Jesus’s very last words were taken from Psalm 31 (30), a prayer of trust and confidence, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”

From this, we can learn that, though God might be silent, God is close to us, watchful and listening, caring and active in mysterious ways. Let us learn the true meaning of God’s silence from Jesus Himself. With Him, let us take heart in the words of the prophet Isaiah, “In returning and rest, you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” (Isaiah 30:15)