Lombardi: Silence is essential for hearing the Word of God
EDITORIAL Octava Dies 641, October 15, 2011 By Federico Lombardi Director,
Vatican Television Centre & Vatican Radio Wondrous silence On 29
September the theme of reflection for the next World Day of Social Communications
was announced: “Silence and Word: path of evangelisation”. Just a few days later,
on Sunday 9 October, the Pope went to the Carthusian monastery of Serra San Bruno,
in Calabria, to pray with the monks in one of the most distinctive places of the Church’s
spirituality—a place where, as the Prior said, for centuries “the lamp of prayer has
been kept lit in silence and obscurity”. There is no antithesis between silence
and word, between prayer and proclamation. For silence is the essential prerequisite
for accepting and preparing to hear the Word; the sound of the Word becomes meaningful
precisely because it is interspersed with moments of silence. For the person of
today, immersed in a torrent of constant noise—physical or mental—the life of monks
inspires admiration and awe, a nostalgic yearning for the rhythm and balance of a
way of life lost in the past. In any case almost everyone feels its charm and understands—at
least vaguely—the vital importance of a place where silence is not the equivalent
of a void of nothingness, but rather the breath of the spirit, where it becomes possible
to perceive the gentle movement of the heavenly spheres, and, in the end, the quiet
breathing of a “light wind”, of the presence of God, “the most real Reality there
is”—as the Pope has said—“a Reality that lies beyond the perceptible dimension”. While
we inquire how to give wings to the “new evangelisation” and its messages, we should
not forget that their efficacy arises from listening. Their foundation is silence,
full of the reality of the life of God. As the Prior also said, the hidden existence
of the monks who, in God, experience a closeness to all people of the earth—and especially
to those who are seeking, struggling, and suffering—“accompanies us and comforts us”.