The silence
Signs
"The heavens tell of the glory of God, and the work of his hands announces the firmament" (Psal.19)
God speaks through the silence of His works. This is a dimension of God’s silence.
"The heavens tell the glory of God": It is what exists, it is this nature, it is this earth, it is this heaven, which is speaking to us, in silence, of their Creator. The silent writing of heaven, the one that leaves us amazed at the beauty of creation. It is nature that communicates in silence God.
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Word and silence
Persecuted Elijah flees, is tired and wants to die, because it seems to him that everything is useless. The Lord makes him eat a bread and thanks to the strength that that bread gives him, Elijah walks forty days and forty nights, until he reaches Horeb, the holy mountain, and on the mountain he will experience God.
Behold, the Lord passed by. There was a mighty wind to break the mountains and the rocks, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire". The Lord is not in any of the signs of power, neither fire, nor wind, nor earthquake. Where does God dwell? " After the fire there was a murmur of light wind". Elijah knows God in the voice of silence, indeed in the soft silence.
God does not speak in the signs of the power and greatness of the world. God speaks where your intelligence and your heart will never think to hear him, God speaks surprisingly where silence is talking about Him, the voice of silence. The word of God is all imbued with his silence. The Bible is a window to the infinite, God is a devouring fire, God is restlessness, torment.
God who is silent where you would like his word to be heard, the scandal of God hidden before the suffering of his children. If you want to experience God, you must know His silence.
The God who on the abyss that separates us from him, launches the bridge of his word. The word is the bridge that unites man to God. He is the God that reassures, that promises, that gives a certainty, his word is light, it is heat, it is strength that transforms the desert into a garden.
God is the God of silence, because only the silence of God is the condition of risk and freedom. In other words, the silence of God is the space of our freedom. Hope is not in the smile, but in the tears, in the risk and in their silence.
At the heart of the New Testament is the Word who came among us. In the Prologue John writes: "the Word became flesh", it is the abysmal scandal of the word that crosses the distance. The word proceeds from silence. Jesus is the word that proceeds from silence, he is the word made flesh, which refers to an abysmal silence, the silence of the Father.
"The Father spoke his word in eternal silence, therefore it is in silence that it must be heard by men". (St. John of the Cross). You listen to the word not when you repeat it loudly, but when you are silent and this welcoming silence is what the New Testament calls faith.
Never utter the word without having walked long in the paths of silence. Only if you have entered into that silence, will the word be fruitful in you.
The man of today will be able to fully rediscover himself, only if he begins to give, in his existence, a privileged place to silence. Silence seems to have become a foreign value to contemporary man who fears the risk of finding himself, through it, only with himself, with boredom, and the fear of death, chasing after fun, leisure, to escape from himself.
Perhaps it will arouse wonder that with the word we can speak of silence, but word and silence are linked. Silence is inside the word, a characteristic of it, in fact the authentic word is born from silence. True silence is not mutism but a form of communication, it is fullness, the presence of God.
