The following article first appeared in The Horizon. The magazine for the Catholic Women’s League for Victoria and Wagga Wagga.
This year they are encouraging their members to put a special focus on St Joseph, asking for his intercession for the needs of the Church.
“Be still and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10
We are all aware of our current culture’s seemingly unanimous cry of Nietzsche’s exclamation that “God is dead!” It almost feels like a cliche to say it. Yet, how? How did this come about?
There are so many different possible answers to this question, however the starting point surely must be that we, as a whole culture, have forgotten to be still.
How can we know about the existence of God if we do not know how to quieten our bodies, our minds, our souls? Is it that that God seems dead because people have become dead to who they are as human persons? Because they have forgotten how to be alone with themselves? How to, heaven forbid, be in our own thoughts?
As Cardinal Sarah has said of these times, “The simple act of speaking imparts value. Do the words make no sense? It makes no difference. Noise has acquired the nobility silence once possessed” (The Power of Silence)
Never has there ever been a time where noise and distraction has been so constant. Where as soon as we are threatened with our own thoughts, with the flick of a switch, the swipe of a finger, even the command of our own voice, our ears and eyes can be filled with whatever noise is most comforting to us. Our senses are bombarded. The noise is meant to bring us peace and yet somehow we seem even more anxious. There are no moments of still. How can there be the voice of God?
In 1964 Pope St Paul VI said on a visit to Nazareth,
“ O! If only esteem for silence, a wonderful and indispensable spiritual atmosphere, could be reborn within us! Whereas we are deafened by the din, the noise and discordant voice in the frenetic turbulent life of our time.”
What would he think of our own time if he felt that life then was full of noise?!
He doesn’t however, leave us there to despair in the noise. He gives us a place to start to reclaim our peace. He gives us the example of St Joseph and the Holy Family,
“O silence of Nazareth! Teach us to be steadfast in good thoughts, attentive to our inner life, ready to hear God’s hidden inspiration clearly and the exhortations of true teachers”
“O silence of Nazareth”, what a beautiful phrase. In the Gospels St Joseph never speaks. He only acts. He only acts according to the will of God. He shows us how the moments of our day to day lives, when done in the presence of Christ, are a living, breathing prayer.
He teaches us that silence and stillness is not something passive. It is where we draw strength to choose to do the next right thing. And then the next. And then the next. We cannot know the full picture, most of us are not prophets! We can only discern what God wants of us in this moment, now. To do this, we need silence. Mother Teresa said, “The more we receive in silent prayer the more we can give in active life.” (In the Heart of the World) However in order to receive, we first need to accept the silence in our lives.
“Silence is man’s greatest freedom.” (Cardinal Sarah – Power of Silence) Without it we are just pushed along in the current of the noisy crowd. It is with silence that we can choose whether the crowd is right, or whether we need to make our own way, perhaps a radically different way.
We are blessed every year through the life of the Church to go through an examination of our relationship with Christ during Lent. Perhaps we should start with the example of St Joseph. That we, “allow ourselves to be infected by St Joseph’s silence” as Pope Benedict XVI’s strong imagery puts it in his Angelus message on St Joseph in 2005. That we carve out time in our busy schedules to stop, still our minds, even amongst the noise all around us and listen to the voice of God. Know that He is. Understand who we are in Him and from there we can then work on how we are asked to live this truth in our life.
~ Monica Russell
Monica lives in a small idyllic part of rural Victoria with her husband and three rambunctiously loving children. In her spare time she attempts to organise all things web related for the Anima Team.