The GRACE OF SILENCE...a way to holiness

CHRISTIAN R. MAGTALAS Journal SASMA/JUNE 21, 2007

“ I, Lord, went wandering like a strayed sheep, seeking Thee with anxious reasoning without, whilst thou wast within me… I went around the streets and squares of the city of this world seeking thee; and I found Thee not, because in vain I sought without for him, who was within my self.” -St. Augustinea
The sovereignty of nature has been allotted to the silent forces. The moon makes not the faintest echo of a noise, yet it draws millions of tons of tidal waters to and fro at its bidding. We do not hear the sun rise nor the planets set. So, too, the dawning of the greatest moment in a man’s life comes quietly, with none to herald it to the world. In that stillness alone is born the knowledge of the over-self.
Only in deep silence we may hear the voice of the soul. When we give space to ourselves from all the physical and inner noise we have, it is only then we find the voice of our very own selves. The treasure-trove of the real self is within us, but it can be lifted only when the mind is still. It is the grace of silence that will connect the ‘I’ in the ‘inner-me-self’ and ‘in our God.’
In my passed months, I have been too busy of many concerns in my life. I was too focused thinking of my family problem, evaluating my self time to time, doing my assignments in the parish, and others. Fixing all the things seemed to me that important. My spiritual life was too dry and my emotional life became chaotic. My prayer life became mechanical. My relationship with God and with my community became less personal. And even to my relationship with myself was not given an attention. My body was too exhausted to the point that almost all the things that I was doing became meaningless. I lost the sense of my work simply because I lost myself in HIM-my God. I realized that the word “God” is meaningless to me unless I can contact the Absolute within myself; then only can I place it in my vocabulary. The grace of silence is the presence of God. I believe that I could attain the full awareness of my relationship with myself in my God through being ‘in’ in the silence. This connection with the personal God gives way in understanding my all projects in life. I think the greatest problems of individual existence and the supreme questions which haunt the life of every earnest man cannot be solved within the few inches which confine the human brain. But satisfying answers for them are waiting for us in the limitless interior of our being, in the divine substance of our hidden nature. It is a way to pass from the outer to the inner, from being busy with multitude of external activities to being busy with a single internal activity of the soul. Silence is a GRACE indeed!