By Tom Thomas.
“The speech of God is silence. His word is solitude.” Thomas Merton
Most of the Gospel readings during Advent are from the accounts of Mathew and Luke and our perception of Christmas that is shaped by the Crib is mainly of the Shepherds, the Magi, St Joseph, Mother Mary, and the Baby Jesus.
It was a struggle for me to find where the Gospel of Mark fits into this season, launching as it does immediately into the message of John the Baptist, without dwelling on the Nativity in any form.
That connection became clear to me only after reading about the connection between John the Baptist and the desert from the Holy Father’s Angelus address on December 10, 2023.
The Holy Father says, “The Gospel speaks to us about John the Baptist, the precursor of Jesus (cf. Mk 1:1-8), and it describes him as “the voice of one crying in the desert” (v. 3). The desert, an empty place, where you do not communicate; and the voice, a means to speak — these seem like two contradictory images. But they are joined together in the Baptist.
The desert: John preaches there, near the Jordan River, near the place where his people had entered the promised land many centuries earlier (cf. Joshua 3:1-17). In so doing, it is like he was saying: to listen to God, we must return to the place where, for forty years, He accompanied, protected, and educated his people in the desert. This is the place of silence and essentials, where someone cannot afford to dwell on useless things and needs to concentrate on what is indispensable in order to live.”
The Holy Father goes on to add, “And this is an always relevant reminder: to proceed on the journey of life, we need to be stripped of the “more,” because to live well does not mean being filled with useless things, but being freed from the superfluous, to dig deeply within ourselves so as to hold on to what is truly important before God. Only if, through silence and prayer, we make space for Jesus, who is the Word of the Father, will we know how to be freed from the pollution of vain words and chatter. Silence and sobriety — from words, from the use of things, from the media and social media — are not just fioretti (translator’s note: a common practice in Italian devotional life in which someone offers a small sacrifice, a resolution, or the proposal to do a good deed to Our Lord or Our Lady) or virtues; they are essential elements in the Christian life.”
After reading these lines from the Holy Father’s message, the relevance of the Gospel of Mk in the season of Advent becomes clear to me. We must withdraw for a while from the hustle and bustle of the world to listen to Him in silence, cutting away from us all the superfluous worldly matters we needlessly bother with. It is so difficult to keep silent in this world of constant 24-hour digital chatter. And yet, this is a must to be able to hear Him.
As a writer, I am told it is important that I express myself in my own unique voice. This is the way to authentic communication—from the heart. To my amazement, the Holy Father addresses this aspect of voice too: “The voice. This is the means by which we manifest what we think and what we bear in our hearts. We understand, therefore, that it is quite connected with silence because it expresses what matures inside from listening to what the Spirit suggests. Brothers and sisters, if someone does not know how to be quiet, it is unlikely they will have something good to say, while the more attentive the silence, the stronger the word. In John the Baptist, that voice is linked to the genuineness of his experience and the purity of his heart.”
Powerful words! The Holy Father exhorts us to have more space for silence in our lives as we anticipate His coming. Not an empty, oppressive silence, but a silence that is one of listening and praying.
These thoughts seem so meaningful. I do need to make more time for Him in silence, I think to myself. Can’t I find the time in my day to stop by that empty church on the way back from work, or even to get to Mass a few minutes earlier, to listen to Him in silence? Yes, it is a small sacrifice, but it should be a continual part of my Christian life if I am to pay heed to the words of the Holy Father. This does not mean that I should be like one of the Desert Fathers, retreating from the world, but carving out moments of silence and solitude in the day to listen to Him. This is a beneficial practice not only during the Season of Advent but beyond it too.
Silence. Fewer words rather than more. Listening rather than speaking.
I find the quote below very meaningful in summing up the learnings imparted:
“Christ lived for thirty years in silence. Then, during his public life, he withdrew to the desert to listen to and speak with his Father. The world vitally needs those who go off into the desert. Because God speaks in silence.”
― Robert Cardinal Sarah, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise