Editor’s note: This is part 34 of a series, “The Kingdom of Grace.” Part 33 can be found here.
Petitionary prayer, lectio divina, and meditation are three ways to grow in the life of prayer and in the habit of being in the presence of the thrice holy God. God helps us by his grace to practice these three things, but certain conditions or subjective dispositions also help us to practice them well. One of the most important is silence.
Recently, Robert Cardinal Sarah’s book The Power of Silence sold widely. The message spoke to a deeply felt need among Catholics today. It goes without saying that our days are dominated by noise, images, and a constant bombardment of stimulation. Is there anywhere you and I can turn without demands being made upon our attention from some screen or device? The world in which we live often seems to be a kind of organized conspiracy against all interior life. Even the most basic human interactions and normal courtesies are everywhere threatened and much more so are deeper aspirations for prayer. Contemplative souls intuitively sense the problem, but Cardinal Sarah put it into words. His call to silence rang loud and clear.
The point of entering into silence is to enter into relationship with God. Silence is the habit of every listening heart. Silence is the place where the voice of God speaks. Silence is the soil where graces of contemplative prayer flourish. In a world full of noise, everyone who hopes for graces of contemplative prayer must fight for silence.
In his book on Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity, the Dominican theologian Michel-Marie Philipon identified three levels of silence in her prayer life: outer silence, inner silence, and divine silence. Let us consider each one.
Outer silence is the easiest to understand though often not easy to practice. It means either shutting down or removing oneself from sources of noise that strike the ears. Outer silence serves recollection of the heart, and outer noise tends to disturb it. Everyone has experienced the nuisance of unwanted jingles from advertisements bouncing around the mind, and perhaps everyone has experienced distraction in prayer from memories of disturbing conversations. We often speak of custody of the eyes, but what about custody of the ears?
In every generation, men and women of prayer seek out times and places of silence. The Lord Jesus himself spent whole nights in prayer. Perhaps it was the only way to escape the crowds, but it was also to set an example. Seeking to be like him, monks have always practiced the late-night vigil or the early rise before dawn to pray in real silence. Though one might not be a monk, one might try a local church, adoration chapel, an inner room in the house, or even a parked car. At the very least, though, everyone should have set periods of time for some silent prayer every day. Archbishop Fulton Sheen used to counsel fifteen minutes daily as minimum for lay men and women.
Inner silence is another matter. Even when we step back from conversations and shut down the devices, even when we find an outward place to be quiet with the Lord, the struggle becomes the inner noise. All of us have a stream of consciousness. All of us have a steady flow of sensations, images, and passions swirling within ourselves. All of us are subject to intrusive, strange, or dark thoughts and passions to some extent. Ever since the fall of the first human beings, our default mode of inner life is one of self-concern and survival-seeking. Cognitive neuroscience has even identified a network in the brain called the “default mode network.” It is most noticeable when one is awake but in a state of rest. The interior chatter just keeps going, and it is largely involuntary. The default mode network also reflects the anxious fears, worries, and concerns of fallen human beings. It is poised for trouble. In this way, the latest science corroborates to some extent what spiritual teachers have long said. The interior life of a fallen human being is largely a conversation with oneself that needs to be transformed into a conversation with God. Whosoever would come to live in the presence of God and in communion with him must undergo serious metanoia – a serious transformation of the mind.
To obtain some measure of inner silence, one can with the help of God’s grace make efforts to let go of control, calm down, and back off from interior chatter. When sitting down to pray, perhaps the two most important words anyone can say is “I surrender.” At any one point in time, however, the surrender of our hearts only goes so deep. In the secret places of our hearts, old habits of trying to stay in control, stay safe, and run the world still linger and influence our minds. So do a thousand tendencies towards self-preservation, self-gratification, and self-aggrandizement. As a result, dark thoughts, disordered passions, and distractions cloud the eyes of our hearts like so much mud.
The process of rooting out the sources of our distraction is a long one, and how it takes place is one of the great mysteries of the spiritual life. Meditation on the love of Christ crucified is one time-tested practice, repeatedly calling upon the Holy Name is another, and petitionary prayer for graces of purification is another still. We will talk about each of these in later articles. One way or another, all such strategies are long-term processes. How shall we find inner silence in the present moment given where we are now in the spiritual life?
Ask for graces of inner silence. The Virgin is a great help. So, too, is Saint Joseph. Scripture records none of his words, yet his silence speaks volumes about what is most important in life. The holy angels, too, help to calm and quiet us in prayer. Their whole life is one of silence and service to our souls, yet we often forget to call on them for help in quieting down. Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity, though, is one of the truly great patronesses of silence. An adoring silence was her way to God, and she will help you and me to go the same way. In fact, when we ask her for help to be silent, the result is often the grace of divine silence.
Divine silence is on another plane. It is not a matter of actively silencing oneself, either outwardly or inwardly, but of being passively silenced – inwardly silenced – silenced by God.
Divine silence is a grace, and we should ask for it. It is also a sacred experience. Like all sacred experiences, it is best not to describe it too much, since the experience of it varies widely from one person to the next. Nonetheless, it is safe to say divine silence comes upon us. It happens to us. When it does, the usual inner noise and turmoil falls away, and the heart becomes free to be present to the Presence. Indeed, the eyes of the heart become free to go wherever God would lead us in the life of prayer.
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Father James Dominic Brent, O.P. is a Dominican Friar who lives and teaches at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC. He is the author of The Father’s House: Discovering Our Home in the Trinity. His podcast is called Contemplata — a podcast for contemplative souls. He posts select homilies, spiritual conferences, interviews, and radio spots on on his personal Soundcloud site. He frequently lectures for the Thomistic Institute and appears on Aquinas 101.
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