Homily for the Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time - August 9, 2020

Homily for August 9, 2020

Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

The Power of Silence

 

            Once a farmer lost his pocketwatch while working in his barn. It had been given to him by his grandfather, and so had great sentimental value. He searched high and low in the barn, looking everywhere, turning things upside down, making a great racket. But after a couple hours, he could not find the watch anywhere.

            He found a few neighborhood kids and offered them a fine reward if any of them could find the watch. They likewise tore the place apart, looking up and down the barn, in every nook and cranny, sifting through the entire haystack, but to no avail. All left, disappointed, except for one young boy.

            The boy begged the farmer for one last chance to find the watch. The farmer shrugged and said, “Sure,” but was exhausted by the ordeal and headed home for some rest. But only a short time later the boy showed up on his front porch with the watch. The farmer was amazed and asked, “How did you manage to find the watch in a few minutes when we spent hours searching?”

            The boy responded, “I just stood there in silence, listening to the watch tick. In silence, it was so much easier to hear and I could tell the direction of the sound.”

            Indeed – how much you can hear in silence! When the cacophony of noise subsides, we hear the powerful voice of God. As CS Lewis wrote, “In Heaven there is music and there is silence; in Hell there is only noise.”

            Elijah was fleeing from a queen who wanted him killed – so he fled to this cave, seeking direction and intimacy with God, in silence. Jesus had experienced a similarly stressful and life-threatening situation. Earlier in the chapter, John the Baptist had just been killed by Herod, who was now seeking to see Jesus. Jesus for His part had just multiplied bread and fish for five thousand people, causing such a riot that they tried to come and make Him king. This was not why He came – He was not intending to be a political king, and this crowd-enthusiasm was dangerous since the authorities would see Jesus as a threat that must be destroyed – so He needed some time of peace, to seek intimacy with His Father.

            So Jesus sends the crowds away – and He sends His disciples away. The word in Greek literally means that Jesus “ordered” or “compelled” the disciples to leave – He ached for this time to be alone, in silence, with the Father. Twice the Gospel writer emphasizes that Jesus was “alone” – the Lord Himself needed time of silence to hear His Father’s voice.

            If Elijah and Jesus need silence, so do we!

            Silence can be immensely powerful. We take a moment of silence before sporting events to remember tragedies; people sometimes take a vow of silence in order to protest an injustice. Many religious communities speak very little – the Carthusians, for example, only speak freely once per week, and keep absolute silence for twelve hours every day.

            Why is silence so powerful? In silence we encounter ourselves, and we encounter God. We have nowhere to hide from either when we enter into silence.

Once, I challenged a group of teens to spend ten minutes in silence per day. One girl looked as if I had asked her to cut off her right arm. She gasped, “I could never do that!” I said, “Why not?” And she responded, “Because I am afraid of what I might hear.”

In silence we can’t be fake; we can’t hide; we can’t pretend to be who we’re not. Silence doesn’t care about your bank account or PhD or Instagram followers. Silence strips it all away so we are alone with God. And God communicates Himself in silence, not in noise – if you want to know Him, be silent. You cannot have a real relationship with God if you do not have daily silence in your life.

It can be hard to find silence these days! On average, the American adult spends 11 hours per day staring at a screen – this “digital noise” takes away the silence we crave. But if you wish to have a relationship with God, to hear Him and be with Him, we must make time for real silence, every day.

Cardinal Robert Sarah recently published an absolutely phenomenal book called “The Power of Silence” in which he writes: “The greatest things are accomplished in silence…Through silence, we return to our heavenly origin, where there is nothing but calm, peace, repose, silent contemplation, and adoration of the radiant face of God.”

In silence, God shows us His love. In silence, He reveals His will. In silence, the Holy Spirit convicts our hearts of sin. In silence, we discover that peace that we long for.

So I wish to challenge you to carve out 10-15 minutes of silence each day to be alone with God. Turn off the TV and put away the iPhone; take a walk or hole yourself up in your room; order the kids to depart just as Jesus ordered His disciples; and just listen in silence, love God in silence. Silence will change your life.

If Jesus, the Son of God, needed silence – so do we. As St. John of the Cross said, “What we need most in order to make progress [in the spiritual life] is to be silent before this great God with our appetite and with our tongue, for the language he best hears is silent love.”