Knowing When to Speak

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

We’re told in St. Mark that Jesus “was silent and made no answer” (Mark 14:61). For thirty years, Jesus had lived a life of silence. Mary and Joseph were the only ones who knew the mystery of the Son of God.

During His public life, when He returned to His hometown, His relatives were disconcerted by His wisdom and His miracles. They had known Him only from His exemplary life of work.

During the three years of His public life, we see how He withdraws into the silence of prayer, to be alone with His Father God. He withdraws from the superficial clamor of the multitude that wants to make Him their king. He performs miracles without ostentation, asking people He cures to refrain from publicizing His powers.

We see that one of the characteristics of the life of Christ was silence. His silence before His enemies in the Passion is very moving: “He was silent and made no answer,” we’re told (Mark 14:61). In the face of so many false accusations, He makes no defense.

St. Jerome comments, “Our God and Savior, who because of his mercy had redeemed the world, allows himself to be led to his death like a lamb, without a word of complaint or self-defense. The silence of Jesus obtains pardon for the protest and excuse of Adam” (Jerome, Commentary on St. Mark’s Gospel).

Jesus says nothing during the hearings before Herod and Pilate. We see Him standing silent at their preference for Barabbas in front of His hate-filled enemies.

We’re told in St. Matthew: “When he was accused by the chief priests and elders, he made no answer. Then Pilate said to him, ‘Do you not hear how many things they testify against you?’ But he gave him no answer, not even to a single charge, so that the governor wondered greatly” (Matt. 27:12-14).

The silence of Jesus in the face of human passions, before the sins which are committed every day by humanity, is not a silence of anger. It is a silence that’s full of patience and love.

The silence of Calvary is that of a God who comes to redeem all men by His indescribable agony of the Cross. The silence of Jesus in the tabernacle is that of a love which waits for a response. It’s the patient silence of one who treasures our attentions.

Christ’s silence during His earthly life represents interior strength and sense of purpose. One writer says, “Those who complain continually about their misfortunes or their bad luck should look at the example of Our Lord. Those who proclaim their problems to the four winds should consider the behavior of Christ. Those who feel compelled to explain and excuse their actions, who wait anxiously for praise or approval, should take note of Christ, who says nothing.

“We will imitate him when we learn to accept life’s duties and worries without sterile complaints, when we confront our personal problems without dumping them in someone else’s lap, when we face squarely the consequences of our actions, when we do our work for the glory of God without looking for earthly praise” (F. Suarez, The Two Faces of Silence, Nuestro Tiempo).

“Jesus says nothing,” we’re told in Scripture. We have to learn to say nothing on many occasions. At times vanity will have us say things which should have been kept locked in the soul.

The silent figure of Christ is the ever-present model to reproach empty or useless words. His example will lead us to remain silent before calumny and rumor. The Prophet Isaiah says, “In silence and in hope will be your fortitude and your courage” (Isa. 30:15). He encourages us that our fortitude is grounded in silence and in hope.

At the same time, Our Lord doesn’t always remain silent. He teaches us that sometimes we have to speak out when it’s necessary, with charity and with fortitude, avoiding the silence of consent.

There is a silence that can collaborate with lying, a silence that can cooperate with cowardice, a silence which springs from the love of comfort and the fear of complicating one’s life. You can close your eyes to what is disagreeable. You can put off making a fraternal correction that ought to be made at home or at work.

The word of Jesus is full of authority as He faces injustice and abuse. In St. Matthew we’re told, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you devour widows’ houses and for a pretense you make long prayers” (Matt. 23:14).

St. John the Baptist was “the voice of one crying in the wilderness” (Matt. 3:3). He teaches us to say everything that must be said, even though it may seem as if we too are crying in the wilderness.

Our Lord will not allow our words to be wasted. It’s important that we say what has to be said, without worrying ourselves about the immediate consequences.

If each Christian were to speak in conformity with the faith, we would surely change the world. We can’t sit by silently in the face of such crimes of abortion and the degradation of marriage and the family. Nor can we surrender to those forces that would seek to remove God from the formation of the young.

We can’t be silent at attacks upon the Pope and Our Lady, or upon institutions of the Church. To be silent when we should be speaking out can be a way of collaborating with evil, because others might think that our silence means consent.

If Catholics were to speak out where there is need, if they were to boycott anti-Catholic publications or literature, it would be more difficult for those enterprises to prosper.

In our prayer today, we can ask Our Lord for the grace to speak out when necessary. At times, those occasions will be when we’re with a little group of our friends, coming or going to school or to work. In letters to the editor, we can write in praise of a good article or to criticize a bad one.

We should always act with charity. It’s worthwhile to remember that true charity always goes hand in hand with fortitude. We need to exercise good manners, always working with the intention of bringing souls to Jesus Christ. Yet we should act at the same time with the fortitude of Our Lord.

If upon realizing that his life was in danger, St. John the Baptist had remained silent or retired to the sidelines of public affairs, he would not have been beheaded by Herod. But John was not that kind of man. He was not “a reed shaken by the wind” (Matt. 11:7). He was true to his vocation and also to his principles to the end.

If he had remained silent, he could have lived a few more years, but his disciples would not have been the first to follow Our Lord. He would not have “prepared and made straight the way of the Lord,” as we’re told by Isaiah (Isa. 40:3). He would not have lived up to his vocation. His life would have been bereft of meaning.

Probably Our Lord is not asking us to suffer a martyr’s death, but He is asking for courage and fortitude in facing up to the demands of ordinary life. Perhaps He is asking us to stop watching a bad TV show or to cease putting off an apostolic conversation.

We can’t allow ourselves to hide behind excuses when there is a lot of apostolic work to be done. We have to act with optimism, loving the world and the good that is in it, while seeking to increase that goodness. We can do this with the example of a joyful family and of the youthful love that is born of holy purity.

There are other kinds of cowardly silence which we have to struggle against: the silence we might maintain with the person next to us. But God has put that person there so that we might be a beacon of light for him or for her.

It’s hard to imagine that we can be courageous at all in this life if we are not courageous first with ourselves, especially when we’re talking with our spiritual director, to say the things that need to be said.

Many of our friends, on seeing that we truly practice what we preach, will be attracted to the faith. Centuries ago, many people converted after witnessing the martyrdom of the first Christians.

We can learn a lot from Our Lord’s silence. We’re told in the Psalms, “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?” (Ps. 42:2). God lives in our midst and often in a very silent way.

Throughout the Old Testament, God makes known His intention of having an ongoing presence among men. The “tent of meeting” was the first temple to God in the desert. Upon the tent there came to rest a cloud which symbolized the glory of God and His presence.

“Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle” (Ex. 40:34). The cloud was a sign of the divine presence (cf. Num. 12:5; 1 Kings 8:10-11).

Much later, the Temple of Jerusalem was the place where the Israelites worshiped God (cf. Ex. 23:15-17). It was the place they had been longing for while they were in the desert.

They would recall the enthusiasm of old when they would go to the house of the Lord, singing songs of joy and praise: “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God” (Ps. 84:1-2).

To be far from the sanctuary was to be deprived of true happiness. “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God?” (Ps. 42:2).

In the fullness of time, the Word became flesh. In the moment of the Incarnation the power of the Most High overshadowed Our Lady (cf. Luke 1:35). This is an expression of the omnipotence of God.

Following upon the Incarnation, Our Lady, the Virgin, became the Tabernacle of God. “The Word of God dwelt among us,” we’re told in St. John (John 1:14).

St. John uses a Greek verb for “dwelt” which originally meant “to pitch one’s tent,” hence, to live in a place. “The careful reader of Scripture will immediately think of the tabernacle, or tent, in the period of the exodus from Egypt, where God showed his presence before all the people of Israel through certain signs of his glory, such as the cloud covering the tent.

“In many passages of the Old Testament it is announced that God ‘will dwell in the midst of the people’ (cf. Jer. 7:3; Ezek. 43:9; Sir. 24:8). These signs of God’s presence, first in the pilgrim Tent of the Ark in the desert and then in the Temple of Jerusalem, are followed by the most wonderful form of God’s presence among us—Jesus Christ, perfect God and perfect Man, in whom the ancient promise is fulfilled in a way that far exceeded men’s greatest expectations. Also the promise made through Isaiah about the ‘Emmanuel’ or ‘God with us’ (Isa. 7:14; cf. Matt. 1:23) is completely fulfilled through this dwelling of the Incarnate Son of God among us” (The Navarre Bible, St. John).

From that time onwards, we can say with exactitude that God lives among us. We can be next to Him every day, closer to Him than anyone might imagine possible—God truly dwelling among us.

From the moment of the Incarnation we can affirm that God is with us in the personal presence of Jesus Christ. As both true God and true Man, Jesus is closer to us than any other being. Jesus is “God with us.”

In earlier times, the Israelites would say that God was “with them.” Now we can say this in a very literal sense.

When Christ traveled about Palestine, He made an effort to preach in many towns. “When Jesus had finished these parables,” we’re told, “he went away from there” (Matt. 13:53). God left one town to go and meet other people.

When the priest consecrates the host during the Mass, he brings Christ to the altar with His Holy Humanity. He is there in the Eucharist with a special presence for as long as the sacramental species last.

This presence affects the Body of Christ in a direct way and the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity in an indirect way. The Word is tied to Christ’s humanity, while the Father and the Holy Spirit are related by the mutual immanence of their divine Persons (cf. Council of Trent, Decree, De Sanctissima Eucharistia).

Christ is really present in the Tabernacle with His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity. It can be said quite literally that ‘God is here, close to me.’ We could make that act of faith: “My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me.”

Down through the centuries the Church has developed a precise way of describing the Eucharistic presence, often requiring such exact definition to counter erroneous beliefs.

The Eucharistic presence is a real presence, a silent presence. It is not symbolic, nor does it signify or insinuate any image.

It is not fictitious, or merely the product of the imagination or the will. It is substantial because the words of the Consecration spoken by the priest change the substance of bread and the wine into the substance of the Body and Blood of Christ.

Paul VI says, “Every theological explanation which seeks some understanding of this mystery must, in order to be in accord with Catholic faith, maintain that in the reality itself, independently of our mind, the bread and wine have ceased to exist after the Consecration, so that it is the adorable Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus that from then on are really before us under the sacramental species of bread and wine…” (Paul VI, Apostolic Letter, Credo of the People of God, Point 25, June 30, 1968).

In the encyclical Mysterium Fidei, Paul VI says, “As a result of transubstantiation, the species of bread and wine…contain a new ‘reality’ which we may justly term ‘ontological.’ Not that there lies under those species what was already there before, but something quite different; and that not only because of the faith of the Church, but in objective reality… (cf. Paul VI, Encyclical, Mysterium Fidei, Point 46, September 3, 1965).

Jesus is silently present in our Tabernacles whether or not we take advantage of this amazing wonder. He is there silently, with His Body and His Blood, His Soul and His Divinity. God made Man. He could not be closer.

The Church possesses the Author of all grace and the cause of our sanctification. We may venture to say that the Eucharistic presence of Christ is the sacramental prolongation of the Incarnation.

From the Tabernacle Jesus invites us to bring to Him our concerns and our petitions. In the visit to the Blessed Sacrament and other acts of worship offered to the Holy Eucharist, we give thanks for this great gift.

There we can go to find new strength, to tell Jesus that we miss Him, to tell Him that we need Him very much. “The Eucharist is reserved in the churches and oratories [to serve as] the spiritual center of a religious community or of a parish, and [indeed] of the universal Church and of all humanity, since beneath the appearance of the species, Christ is contained: the invisible Head of the Church, the Redeemer of the world, the center of all hearts, ‘by whom,’ says St. Paul, ‘all things are and by whom we exist’ (1 Cor. 8:6)” (ibid., Point 68).

It has been the constant practice of the Church to adore Christ’s silent presence in the Tabernacle. If we recall how much reverence the Israelites had for their “tent of meeting” in the desert and for the Temple at Jerusalem, which were figures or images of reality, how much more reverence should we have for Christ truly present in the Tabernacle?

In the first centuries of the Church, the main reason for reserving the Sacred Species was for the sake of those who were not able to get to Mass, especially the sick and the dying, and also for those in prison due to religious persecution. The Sacrament of the Lord was brought with piety and fervor so that these Christians might also receive Communion.

Later, faith in the real presence of Christ led to the cult of the Blessed Sacrament, and the Church authoritatively approved those practices. The Council of Trent declared, “There is, therefore, no room left for doubt that all the faithful of Christ in accordance with a custom always received in the Catholic Church offer in veneration the worship of latria which is due to the true God, to this most Holy Sacrament” (Council of Trent, Session XIII).

In the thirteenth century, St. Thomas Aquinas composed a Eucharistic hymn which embodies the faith of the Church in a faithful and pious manner. We should make this hymn our own so as to nourish our piety and give honor to the Blessed Sacrament.

The hymn states: “O Godhead hid, devoutly I adore you, Who truly are within the forms before me; To you my heart I bow with bended knee, As failing quite in contemplating thee” (Prayer in Adoration Before the Blessed Sacrament, Adore te Devote).

Here we have all the truths of the faith. We have understanding with humility and thanksgiving, amazement before the power of God, surprise at the extent of His mercy. With the confidence gained by having Him so close by, we can ask Our Lord for His grace to unite ourselves to His most holy will.

Next to the silent Tabernacle, we can learn how to love. There we will draw the strength necessary to remain faithful. We’ll find consolation in times of sorrow.

He silently waits for us and He rejoices when we are next to Him, even if only for a short while. There Jesus waits for His people who suffer the contradictions of this life. He comforts them with the warmth of His understanding and His love.

It is in the Tabernacle that the words of Our Lord come to life, specifically those words where He says, “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28).

We should not fail to visit Him. He is waiting for us. He has many gifts prepared for us.

Mary, we turn to you, Comfort of the afflicted, Cause of our joy. We ask you for the grace to learn from the silence of Our Lord in His public life, and also in the Tabernacle.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

EW