Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

Silence. As a former middle school teacher, I have often thought, “How can you hear me if you are talking?” Or, “Weren’t you listening? I just explained how to do this.” As adults and educational professionals who spend all day in noisy, busy classrooms, is it possible for even us to listen and talk at the same time? Are we not all guilty of daydreaming or making a mental to-do list during a meeting only to find out later that some big news was announced that we totally missed?

Silence. For some of us, the very word “silence” causes anxiety. Many of us judge our successes based on how busy we are. We go 100 miles an hour from sunrise to sunset. We are all busy being spouses, or adult children caring for elderly parents, or parenting our own children, or taking care of our home. When do we make time to just stop and listen? When we pray, do we bombard God with requests and prayer intentions and then carry on with our day, or do we take the time to just sit and listen?

Mother Teresa has written many beautiful reflections on silence, and in this passage, she ties it to prayer and service.

“God is the friend of silence, in that silence He will listen to us; there He will speak to our soul, and there we will hear His voice. The fruit of silence is faith. The fruit of faith is prayer, the fruit of prayer is love, the fruit of love is service and the fruit of service is silence.”

This of course is not as easy as it sounds. It means we have to step away from our busy lives, put down the smartphone, turn off the TV, stop doing chores, and even stop grading papers or lesson planning. The laundry will wait. The kitchen floor can be mopped tomorrow.  Maybe it means that we don’t check off every single thing on today’s to-do list so we have time to be still and listen for God in the silence.

I was once offered the opportunity to go with a friend on a contemplative retreat, where we would be in total silence for a whole weekend, talking was only allowed during meals. I was too busy to go, I told my friend, but deep down inside I didn’t think I could do it. I didn’t think I could be silent for an entire weekend, but now I wish I would have gone and experienced it. What might I have heard in the silence?

St. John Paul II often went away to a quiet place to sit in prayer and in silence. He told his people in the Vatican that he was emulating Jesus, who also broke away from the crowds and even his own disciples to be alone and sit in silence. In his homily at his inauguration as pope, John Paul II said,

“So let us leave aside words. Let there remain just great silence before God, the silence that becomes prayer.”

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI also spoke of silence, establishing a connection between silence and prayer,

“In our prayers, we often find ourselves facing the silence of God. We almost experience a sense of abandonment; it seems that God does not listen and does not respond. But this silence, as happened to Jesus, does not signify absence. Christians know that the Lord is present and listens, even in moments of darkness and pain, of rejection and solitude. Jesus assures His disciples and each one of us that God is well aware of our needs at every moment of our lives.” 

In John 3:30, Jesus comes to be baptized as an act of solidarity with the sinners who have gathered, John the Baptist is the first to recognize Jesus as the One to come. Later when Jesus’ ministry is drawing followers away from John the Baptist, John calms his own anxious disciples by announcing,

“This joy of mine has been made complete. He must increase; I must decrease. The One from Heaven.”

Silence. We should make the time in our busy lives for silence. We should be still and know that God is near. If we can decrease, He will increase. He will speak to our soul. We will hear His voice.