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The Silence of Christmas Speaks Loud and Clear

By Gabe Garnica

 

 

In his wonderful book, The Power of Silence: Against The Dictatorship of Noise, Cardinal Robert Sarah tells us

Without silence, God disappears in the noise. And this noise becomes                                                             all the more obsessive because God is absent. Unless the world rediscovers silence,                                        it is lost.

We might rightly ask, what does Cardinal Sarah mean by silence and noise?  The answer, my friends, is all around us right now.  Cardinal Sarah refers to silence as that environment by which we can encounter God, Who is Divine Silence. Only by placing ourselves in the silence that is God can we ever hope to hear Him in our hearts, minds, and souls.  I was once told that God always answers our prayers but that we often are not listening or do not want to listen to His answer.

If God is true silence, then what is this noise that we speak of?  Is it the sirens and whistles that invade our daily lives?  Is it the clamoring of crowds and busy streets?  Is it the blare of alarm clocks and bells that dictate our hypnotizing routine toward ends we may no longer even know?

For Cardinal Sarah, noise is anything which distracts us from God, and so that kind of noise is far beyond the sounds that disrupt our quiet moments of meditation and reflection. We all have our favorite sounds and songs. Some love a bubbling brook or birds chirping. Others enjoy the sounds of a forest or soft background music.  Ultimately, inevitably, sounds surround us with such frequency and intensity that we become oblivious to their power over us. The loud sounds of a factory or office fade into the distance the longer one works in those environments. Eventually, we internalize those sounds so that they become part of who we are and, for that matter, part of who we become to others. If we allow this world to become our priority, we will invariably allow the sounds of this world to become the background music of that priority.

Faced with such variety of sounds, we indirectly choose which will become noise and which will remain simply sounds.  Sounds are those things that we hear through our ears, but noises are those sounds that we hear through our minds, hearts, and souls which distract and even distance us from God.  Most people will agree that alarm bells, whistles, busy streets, and bustling workplaces by themselves do not really distract us from God.  I do not necessarily distance myself from God when I hear an alarm clock or enter a busy office.

So when do sounds become noise for us?  For many of us, a sound becomes a noise when it is annoying, unpleasant, unwanted, or distracting, and that is a valid, earthly view of noise.  Earthly noise inspires us to escape, avoid, or distance ourselves from the source of that noise.   Listening to songs or music that we do not like is often noise to us because we do not find these pleasant or to our liking. In fact, things we do not understand, care about, or relate to often become simply noise to us.

However, for Cardinal Sarah, the worst kind of noise is that which pushes us away from God and what God is about.  This noise is contradictory to the love and essence of what God truly is.  The silence of God is not found in criticism, judgment of others, gossip, vulgarity, arrogance, or mockery.  Neither is this divine silence found in idle, useless talk about superficial things.

As we proceed through our yearly Christmas journey, we may ask ourselves if this journey has become a mundane routine, a robotic ritual, or a remote control duty to fulfill.  Do we do Christmas or do we truly experience its  essence?  Do we treat Christmas like some shopping list to finish or do we embrace Christmas as a beautifully profound opportunity to re-connect with what really matters?

There is nothing inherently wrong with Christmas music, shopping, decorations, parties, family gatherings, and all of the exciting preparations we make each year as long as we do not allow these things to define Christmas for us and therefore distance us from God. The sounds of Christmas become the noise of Christmas to the extent that we forget Christ as a result.  There was a time when celebrating Christmas and getting closer to God went hand and hand.  That time is past and lost.  We are surrounded by a word and society  immersed in very temporary, superficial, distracting, and even destructive spiritual noise.  We live in a world which no longer inspires us toward God but, sadly, seems to make every effort to drag us away from Him. Whether this world succeeds in that effort is up to each of us.

God is Divine Silence, but He speaks to each of us loud and clear if we are willing to listen.  We encounter Him in our prayer, in our kindness and love toward others, and in the eyes of the fragile elderly,  frightened sick, confused young, and marginalized homeless. If we engage in the daily struggle to push away this world’s noise and simply listen to God’s divine, not-so-silent call, we can  encounter the child Jesus on that silent night each and every day of the year.

 

2018  Gabriel Garnica

Read all posts by Gabe Garnica Filed Under: Catholic Spirituality, Culture, Featured, loving the poor, Prayer, Social Justice, Spiritual Warfare Tagged With: Cardinal Robert Sarah, Gabriel Garnica, noise, silence, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise

Living Advent 3: When Our Advent Anxieties Get the Best of Us

By Maureen Smith

 800px-thumbnailDuring my morning commute I was reading a few pages of Father Jaques Philippe’s, Thirsting for Prayer. I came upon one of many striking truths in the book and thought how relevant it was for this season of Advent.

I hope you find my thoughts on it helpful.

He describes the experience in prayer when, far from feeling peace and rest from the anxieties, fears, disappointments and horror of our sins, we are flooded with the shameful sting of all of these with a particular acuity. This often discourages us from continuing or return to prayer.Christmas_Eve

Advent and Christmas as a whole can do the same. As we prepare to visit or host family, try to get the perfect presents without emptying our savings, keep our kids out of trouble during their winter break, etc., we find a lot of emotional, mental, and sometimes physical friction. There seems to be less room to breathe and more room for irritation and frustration.

Rather than feeling “tidings of comfort and joy” we feel anger and a host of other unpleasant emotions. Family members bring up past hurts or misunderstandings, work is busier than usual, and reflecting on the past year ensures us that we will receive coal in our stockings. Prayer can feel overwhelming because all of these anxieties seem to overtake us when we get a moment’s silence.

1200px-Peace_tower_at_Christmas_2These feelings can numb or deaden the joy of Christmas within us and lead us to a mere going through the motions. We might even be anxious to “get through” the holidays so that we can return to the normalcy of life where we feel safer and more capable of doing life well.

But I believe Jesus wants to free each and every one of us from the spirit of anxiety and emotional closterphobia. By his becoming flesh – one of us – at Christmas we know that he participates in our humanity and therefore can relate all of our struggles in an imperfect, fallen world. He is patient with us in these moments and, I believe, He wants us to be patient with ourselves. Worship_of_the_shepherds_by_bronzino

During this busy season, when life can feel less “holy” than it “should,” I hope that you will join me in asking the Lord to dwell in whatever situations are causing us anxiety and frustration.

Even if our prayer is still filled with those anxieties and no devotion or Scripture passage can rid our mind of those thoughts, we are not alone and we have a Good Teacher who is faithful to his promise of peace. Even if we don’t feel His Presence, our faith tells us that He dwells in us. And that, my friends, gives us reason to hope!

Read all posts by Maureen Smith Filed Under: Culture, Evangelization, General, Prayer, Scripture Tagged With: advent, anxiety, Christmas, Jaques Philipe, peace, prayer, silence

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