Christmas 2024
The general atmosphere of Christmas, both in scripture and in the hymns that we sing, suggests a mystery wrapped in silence. “Silent Night, Holy Night” expresses this atmosphere. Scripturally, the story of Jesus’ birth includes this scene: “Now there were shepherds in that region living in the fields and keeping the night watch over their flock. The angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them.” The night watch suggests the shepherds were wrapped in silence. Meister Eckhart, a medieval mystic, cites a passage from the book of Wisdom to describe the Christmas mystery: “When all things lay in the midst of silence, then there descended down into me from on high, from the royal throne, a secret word” (Wisdom 18:14). He says that Jesus was born ages ago and that Jesus must be born again today. God is waiting to birth the Son in our souls. Eckhart continues, “The soul in which this birth is to take place must keep…quite collected and turned entirely inward…there must be a silence and a stillness, and the Father must speak in that, and give birth to His Son.” To wake up to the divine presence within – to give birth to the Son in Eckhart’s words – we must be silent within. Silence is the most necessary spiritual practice. Then, living awake to God within through silence, at peace and joyful, we will be able to love others like Jesus loved us.
An ancient monk named St. Isaac the Syrian writes beautifully of the practice of silence as he discusses a holy man named Arsenius. Monks would visit Arsenius to receive spiritual counsel, because they sought God. Their visit was not social in nature. Isaac writes, “Love silence above all things, because it brings you close to fruit that the tongue cannot express. Let us force ourselves to be silent and then, from out of this silence is born something that leads to silence itself [i.e., inner silence]. God grant you may perceive some part of that which is born of silence! If you begin with this discipline, I know not how much light will dawn on you from it. Do not infer, O brother, from what is said of that wondrous man Arsenius, that when the fathers would visit him and the brethren come to see him, and he would sit with them and remain silent, and in silence let them go—do not infer, I say, that he did this completely voluntarily, except at the beginning, when he forced himself to it. After a time a certain sweetness is born in the heart out of the practice of this labor, and it leads the body by force to persevere in stillness…When Arsenius found that it was often impossible, because of the place of his abode, to be far withdrawn from the proximity of men and from the monks who settled in those parts—then by grace he learned this way of life: unbroken silence. And if out of necessity he ever opened his door to some of them, they were gladdened only by the mere sight of him; but conversation with words, and its employment, were rendered superfluous between them.”
Two more quotes. One is from St. John of the Cross, a sixteenth-century Spanish mystic: “The very pure spirit does not bother about the regard of others or human respect, but communes inwardly with God, alone and in solitude as to all forms, and with delightful tranquility, for the knowledge of God is received in divine silence.” The soul is to commune with God in silence. The other quote comes from St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, a French mystic who lived in the late 1800s. St. Elizabeth writes, “My Rule tells me: ‘In silence will your strength be.’ It seems to me, therefore, that to keep one’s strength for the Lord is to unify one’s whole being by means of interior silence, to collect all one’s powers in order to ‘employ’ them in ‘the one work of love,’ to have this ‘single eye’ which allows the light of God to enlighten us.” These two mystics testify to the necessity for inner silence: a non-thinking silence within. We know God within by interior silence, by shutting down our thinking and resting in God in faith.
Today, we call this inner silence “meditation.” Although the term for it in Christian tradition has been “contemplation,” the word “meditation” is alive in public consciousness. This Christmas, I invite you to meditate, to sink into silence within, stop thinking, and enjoy God’s delightful mystery. There are many methods to put this silence into practice: Centering Prayer, Christian Meditation, the Jesus Prayer, Lectio Divina, or the contemplative Rosary. Choose one and experiment with it for a few weeks. At the same time, join us for the meditation group at the Cathedral of St. Matthew. We meet on Sundays on Zoom at 1:30pm (see the website for details). Community is even more precious when one commits to the way of interior silence.
Prayer is consenting to the Silence, surrendering to the Silence, and identifying with the Silence. Prayer is how God becomes real for us, the process of waking up to truth. Interior silence is the state in which we are detached from our thoughts. We are not attached to any perception whatsoever. It is the cessation of the interior dialogue, which is the conversation we have with ourselves all day long that comments on, judges, speculates, worries, frets, complains, berates, takes pleasure, and reacts to everything we experience. So, interior silence means we accept ourselves and our feelings. Then, we do not deliberately think of anything at all. Practicing interior silence as a habit in prayer and while walking around in our daily lives means one disregards particular mental-emotional perceptions while surrendering to the divine presence just as it is. To be silent within is to enter God’s Mystery for God is Supreme Silence. In this Silence, the Christ is born.