The language of Silence

 

(I wrote this back in December 2020 for the Young Catholic Woman .)

From poetry to music, from expressing myself in a journal to playing with word puzzles, the written and spoken word are my favourite forms of communication. As might be imagined, when I began to sense Our Lord tugging me toward silence, I initially resisted. It was uncomfortable. I feared that by being silent, Our Lord might not be aware of what I needed.

However, silence revealed this truth: better hearing Him speaking brings me awareness of myself and of what I need. As Saint Paul says in Romans 8:26-27, we do not know what we need—it is the Spirit that speaks on our behalf, interceding for us. When I began to explore the uncountable ways Our Lord speaks to me—through scripture, nature, the witness of the lives of the saints—it became easier to understand and be comfortable with silence.

As I continued to learn this language of silence, I moved to France for a year. It was here that God concretely taught me the immense power of silence. The day I arrived, I remember feeling disoriented while searching for the train station. I did not have a good cell signal and could not express myself in French. A woman noticed me dragging my bags and came to help. We could not speak to each other because, just as I couldn’t speak French, she couldn’t speak English. I pulled out my pen and sketched a train and she immediately understood, giving me a hearty smile.

We walked in silence for the 20 minutes it took to get to the station, exchanging glances and smiles while attempting to communicate through both sign and body language. When we parted ways at the station, I was struck. Here was a beautiful example of the Lord speaking into my fear of not being heard or understood by Him. This woman reminded me that words aren’t always necessary to be understood.

This is not to say that silence is always the gold standard of expression, but the wisdom of scripture has much to teach about the sacredness of silence. A good example is when our Lord told His three friends after the Transfiguration, “As they came down from the mountain Jesus gave them this order, ‘Tell no one about the vision until the Son of Man has risen from the dead’ (Matthew 17:9). These apostles were asked to carry in their hearts what they had learned about Jesus. I think, too, of how Elizabeth hid herself for five months while carrying John the Baptist in her womb in Luke 1:24. This silence was augmented by our Lady’s visit, where both women rejoiced over the good God was doing in their lives.

It’s also marvelous to reflect on Joseph’s silence. He speaks no words in scripture, and his actions are born of deep listening. We read in Matthew 1:19 that Joseph did not expose Mary’s pregnancy publicly: “Her husband Joseph being a man of honour and wanting to spare her publicity, decided to divorce her privately .” However, his listening posture allowed him to attend to the message of an angel to take Mary as his wife. As Saint Jerome teaches of this saint, “Joseph knew Mary’s holiness hid in silence a mystery he did not understand.”

Silence has brought order and tranquility to my life. I no longer have an insatiable urge to be “heard”; my stronger desire is to hear God. I find that when I am silent, I am more inclined to listen. Disorder is more likely to arise when I don’t turn to silence—I’m more likely to blurt things out if I haven’t first pondered my words in silence first. In such actions, I risk losing my tranquility and taking away my neighbour’s tranquility as well. In his The City of God, Book XIX, Saint Augustine teaches us that our souls become ordered and tranquil when we observe the proper order of things.

Our Lady left us with a perfect model for ordered speech and silence: “As for Mary, she treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). Our Blessed Mother shows us by example the gentle power of silence, a disposition that keeps the treasures of God hidden in one’s heart. This pondering in our hearts not only attunes us to God’s grace and mercy in our own lives, but allows us to become a reservoir of his grace and mercy for our neighbour. In imitating Our Lady, the one full of grace, we can learn the blessedness of a quiet spirit, of weighing our words before speaking, and of pondering everything with a heart brimming with love for Christ.