St. Joseph and The Treasure of Silence

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 the Book of Wisdom, “For while gentle silence enveloped all things, and night in its swift course was now half gone, your all-powerful Word leapt from heaven, from your royal throne” (Wis. 18:14-16). The Book of Wisdom speaks about silence: it “enveloped all things,” and in this gentle silence, your Word “leapt from heaven.”

It's no surprise then to find that one of the characteristics of the stable in Bethlehem, of the journey of the Holy Family to Bethlehem, and of their flight to Egypt, is silence. Often the great things of God take place in silence, and the mystery of the Incarnation is one of those things.

“At the heart of man there is an innate silence, for God abides in the innermost part of every person” (Robert Cardinal Sarah, The Power of Silence, Point 3).

When God is present in our soul in grace, He is there in silence. It's not surprising that the journey of the Holy Family from Nazareth to Bethlehem to Egypt was conducted without a word. Words are not needed. God is silence, and this divine silence dwells in man.

That's why there are occasions when periodically we all need silence. We need to withdraw, as Christ withdrew to pray sometimes in silence.

We need periods in the day to talk to God, to examine our conscience, to be alone with Him in silence, in the silence of our prayer. And in God we are inseparably bound up with silence.

“The Church affirms that mankind is the daughter of a silent God; for men are the sons of silence” (ibid.). God invites us to seek Him in silence, to listen to Him, so that we can hear the Holy Spirit whispering things to us.

“God carries us, and we live with Him at every moment by keeping silence” (ibid.). There might be times when we think that God is absent, that He has left us alone. The apostles, when they saw somebody coming towards them, walking on the water, they cried out, “It is a ghost!” (Matt. 14:26). They were terrified, but it was Jesus.

And because our God is silent, we don't hear Him beside us all the time, but He is there.

“Nothing would make us discover God better than His silence inscribed in the center of our being. If we do not cultivate this silence, how can we find God?” (ibid.).

St. Joseph is silent in Bethlehem and throughout his life. Our Lady is very silent, apart from a few words. The closer people are to God, often the more silent they become.

“Man likes to travel, to create, to make discoveries. But he remains outside of himself, far from God, who is silently in his soul” (ibid.).

And that's why to pray, all we have to do is to turn to our heavenly Father God in our soul, in silence, in grace. It's very important to cultivate this silence in order to be truly with God.

St. Paul, drawing on the book of Deuteronomy, explains that we will not encounter God by crossing the seas because He is in our heart. “Do not say in your heart,” he said, “‘Who will ascend into heaven?’ (that is, to bring Christ down) or ‘Who will descend into the abyss?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).

“But what does the law say? We're told in Deuteronomy: The word is near you, on your lips, in your heart (that is, the word of faith which we preach); because, if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom. 10:6-9; Deut. 30:12-14,16).

We're invited many times to listen and meditate in silence upon the words of Sacred Scripture, through which divine graces are poured out on man.

In the Mass, the Church has wisely placed periods of silence, or moments of silence, for us to meditate, to concentrate.

“It is through long hours of pouring over Sacred Scripture, after resisting all the attacks of the Prince of this world, that we will reach God. … Unless silence dwells in man, and unless solitude is a state in which he allows himself to be shaped, the creature is deprived of God. There is no place on earth where God is more present than in the human heart. This heart is truly God's abode, the temple of silence” (ibid., Point 4).

Often you have saints who follow the words of Scripture, to look at the birds of the air, to look at creation a little more closely, in silence, and they find that creation is shouting at them. One saint is said to say to the grass, “Stop shouting.”

“No prophet ever encountered God without withdrawing into solitude and silence. Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist encountered God in the great silence of the desert. … even before the desert, the solitude, and the silence, God is already in man. The true desert is within us, in our soul. Strengthened with this knowledge, we can understand how silence is indispensable if we are to find God” (ibid., Point 5).

The Father waits for His children in their own hearts. It's necessary to leave our interior turmoil in order to find God.

Despite the agitations, the busyness, the easy pleasures, God remains silently present. “He's in us like a thought, a word, and a presence whose secret sources are buried in God himself, inaccessible to human inspection” (ibid., Point 6).

The tradition of the Church tells us that “solitude is the best state in which to hear God's silence” (ibid.).

This is one of the reasons why a yearly retreat is a very good practice to have, and to encourage many of our friends to have a similar practice. Spend two or three days in silence, listening to the things the Holy Spirit wants to say to us.

“For someone who wants to find silence, solitude is the mountain that they must climb. If a person isolates themselves by going away to some particular place, they come first to seek silence. And yet, that goal of their search is within them. ... The silence that we pursue confusedly is found in our own hearts and reveals God to us.

“The worldly powers often seek to shape modern man so as to systematically do away with silence.” For many mystics, the fruitfulness of silence and solitude is similar to that of the word pronounced to the creation of the world.

How do you explain this great mystery? “The word is not just a sound; it is a person and a presence. God is the eternal Word, the Logos” (ibid., Point 7).

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. … He came unto his own, and his own received him not. He was the true Light that comes into the world” (John 1:1,11,9).

St. John of the Cross says, “The Father spoke one Word, which was His Son, and this Word He always speaks in eternal silence, and in silence it must be heard by the soul” (John of the Cross, Spiritual Maxims).

“Later on, the verses of Scripture would be understood by the Christian liturgical tradition as a prefiguration of the silent Incarnation of the Word in the crib in Bethlehem. .… Let us accept this in silence and faith” (ibid., Point 7).

The shepherds came in silence, the Magi came in silence. “God achieves everything. He acts in all circumstances. He brings about all our inner transformations. But he does it when we wait for him in recollection and silence” (ibid., Point 8).

We cannot begin to imagine the spirit of recollection that must have been in the souls of Our Lady and St. Joseph in the moment of the Incarnation.

God was entering the Incarnation in the innermost depths of their being, as well as being present in their arms.

“Here below, any profound transformation, any great external change, usually produces a certain agitation and noise.” But the things of God happen silently. “The great river reaches the ocean only by the sounding onward rush of its water” (Marie-Eugène de l’Enfant-Jésus, I Want to See God).

“If we look at the great works, the most powerful acts, the most extraordinary and striking inner transformations that God carries out in man, we are forced to admit in our own personal life, sense of vocation, major decisions, choice of profession, so many of these things have been carried out in silence. Baptism brings about a marvelous creation in the soul of the infant or the adult who receives this sacrament in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

“The newly baptized person is immersed in the name of the Trinity. A new life is given to him, enabling him to perform godly acts as children of God” (ibid., Point 8).

And all this takes place in the great silence. God has uttered His word in the soul in silence.

And in that same silent darkness, the subsequent developments of grace generally come.

“God is the friend of silence. Trees, flowers, grass, they grow in silence.” St. Teresa of Calcutta liked to say, “The stars, the moon and the sun—how they move in silence.”

“In every era, this experience of an interior life and an intimate, loving relationship with God has remained indispensable for those who seek happiness” (ibid., Point 17).

“The silence of everyday life is an indispensable condition for living with others.” Often we have to be silent and listen. Often our silent presence in our family, in our marriage, in our home, in our office is very important, because “without the capacity for silence, man is incapable of hearing, of loving, and understanding the people around him. Charity is born in silence” (ibid., Point 20).

It's as though the reality of the manger has this subliminal message—the great message that “God is love” (1 John 4:8,16) and that “God is silent” is transmitted to us.

The shepherds come, the Magi come, to be full of wonder, full of admiration. The words of the liturgy these days are full of those words: wonder, admiration.

These dispositions and silence function in tandem. “The sentiments that emerge from a silent heart are expressed in harmony and silence.”

The Church invites us to enter into the intimacy of Bethlehem like small children who are full of wonder and admiration in silence. The great message of the Church is that “the great things of human life are experienced in silence, under God's watchful eye. Silence is man's greatest freedom. No dictatorship, no war, no barbarism can take this divine treasure away from him” (ibid., Point 25).

The Holy Family speaks to us of the divine treasure of silence. We see the treasure of silence in Joseph, in Our Lady. It's a powerful message.

We understand that although silence may be the absence of speech, it's above all an attitude of someone who listens. And the Holy Family are silent. They listen to what the shepherds have to say to them, we're told (Luke 1:16-19). They listen to what the Magi have to say to them (Matt. 2:11).

In the First Book of Kings, we're told, “Give me, Lord, a heart that listens” (1 Kings 3:9). Solomon doesn't say, ‘I want riches for life’ or the life of his enemies or power, but a silent heart so as to listen to God.

“Without the silence that precedes it, speech runs the great risk of being useless chattering. Isaiah says, ‘In quietness and in trust shall your strength be’ (Isa. 30:15)” (ibid., Point 34).

Christ lived out his life for thirty years in silence. He said nothing. Then very often in his public life, He withdrew to the desert to listen to and to speak with the Father.

The world vitally needs those who go far off into the desert, because God speaks in silence. You could say the Holy Spirit speaks to His Church in silence and the Church tries to transmit that message.

“The silence of the eyes consists of being able to close one's eyes in order to contemplate God who is in us, in the interior depths of our personal abyss” (ibid., Point 46).

“Silence of the heart consists of quieting little by little our miserable human sentiments so as to become capable of having the same sentiments as those of Jesus” (ibid., Point 52).

Notice how Joseph and Mary forget all about themselves, their feelings, their sentiments. Everything is placed at the disposition of the Child who has been born.

“Silence of the heart is the silence of the passions. It is necessary to die to ourself in order to join the Son of God in silence. St. Paul says to the Philippians, ‘Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus’ (Phil. 2:4-5)” (ibid.).

“Jesus taught us how to pray,” said Mother Teresa, “but he also told us to learn from him to be meek and humble of heart. We cannot do either of these things unless we know what silence is. Both humility and prayer grow from an ear, mind, and tongue that have lived in silence with God, for in the silence of the heart, God speaks” (Mother Teresa, No Greater Love).

By differentiating between exterior silence and interior silence, we see that although exterior silence promotes interior silence, silence of speech, gesture, or activity finds its full meaning in the search for God. The search is only truly possible in a silent heart.

“There is nothing littler, meeker, or more silent than Christ present in the Host. This little piece of bread embodies the humility and the perfect silence of God, his tenderness and his love for us” (ibid., Point 57).

With what great insistence the Church encourages us to adore the Blessed Sacrament and to spend time in front of Our Lord really, truly, and substantially present there. If we want to grow and to be filled with the love of God, “it is necessary to plant our life firmly on three great realities: the Cross, the Host, and Our Lady. These are the three mysteries that God gave to the world in order to structure, to make fruitful, and to sanctify our interior life and to lead us to Jesus. These three mysteries are to be contemplated in silence and in humility” (ibid.).

“God's meekness and humility penetrate us and we enter into a real conversation with him. Humility is a condition and a result of silence.” We recognize our own nothingness.

“Silence needs humility and meekness. It also opens for us the way to these qualities. The most humble, the meekest, and the most silent of all beings is God. Silence is the only means by which we enter into this great mystery of God” (ibid., Point 58).

These days and hours, we have special times for entering into that silence of God that we find in Bethlehem. “In silence, man conquers his nobility and his grandeur only if he is on his knees in order to hear and adore God” (ibid., Point 66).

The Catechism says that no man can enter into the stable in Bethlehem and even get a glimpse of what's taking place there unless he enters on his knees (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, Point 563).

“It is in the silence of humiliation and self-mortification, by quieting the turmoil of the flesh, by successfully taming the noisy images, by keeping at a distance the dreams, imaginations, and roaring of a world that is always in a whirl, in order to purify himself of all that ruins the soul and separates it from contemplation that makes man capable of looking at God and loving him” (ibid.).

And silence isn't easy, it's “difficult, but it enables man to let himself be led by God. From silence is born silence. Through God the silent, we can attain silence. And man is unceasingly surprised by the light that pours forth then.

“Silence,” says Cardinal Sarah, “is more important than any other human work because it expresses God. The true revolution comes from silence; it leads us towards God and others so as to place us humbly and generously at their service” (ibid., Point 68).

“Silence impels us towards an unknown land, an unknown land that is God. And this land becomes our true homeland. 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” (ibid., Point 71).

“In his Incarnation, Christ assumed human limitations. Face to face with God's silence, we are confronted with absolute love. And this great silence also explains the freedom left to man. God's only power is to love silently. He is incapable of any oppressive force. God is love, and love cannot compel, force, or oppress in order to be loved in return” (ibid., Point 90).

In silence, God's joy becomes our joy. Being silent in the presence of God is almost like being God. And in the Confessions, St. Augustine confides his own experience in some beautiful words. He says, “Late have I loved you, O Beauty so ancient and so new; late have I loved you! For behold you were within me and I outside; and I sought you outside and in my unloveliness fell upon those lovely things that you have made.

“You were with me and I was not with you. I was kept from you by those things, yet had they not been in you, they would not have been at all.

“Because you called and cried to me and broke open my deafness; and you sent forth your beams which shine upon me and chase away my blindness; you breathed fragrance upon me and I drew in my breath and now I pant for you; I tasted you, and now hunger and thirst for you. You touched me and I have burned for your peace” (St. Augustine, *Confessions, Lib. 10,

1. 37-29, 40: CSEL 33, 255-256*).

Ultimately, where are the dwelling places of solitude and silence? In our human heart.

When we consider these points about silence, is it any wonder that the Holy Family look upon the Christ Child in silence, as though saying to the whole world for all time, this is the way to go? This is the way you discover the treasures of the Incarnation.

“Jesus comes to this earth during a peaceful and silent night while mankind is sleeping. Only the shepherds remain awake (Luke 2:8). His birth is surrounded by solitude and silence” (ibid., Point 193).

“The silence of the crib, the silence of Nazareth, the silence of the Cross, the silence of the sealed tomb are one. The silences of Jesus are silences of poverty, humility, self-sacrifice, and abasement; it is the bottomless pit of his self-emptying (Phil. 2:7)” so that we can know him (ibid., Point 196).

Our Lady with St. Joseph, may we learn from you. You take refuge in prayer. You treasure all these things carefully in your heart, in silence. May you teach us to follow the example that you and Joseph give us during these hours and days.

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.

MVF