We all need silence

INTERIOR silence, to be exact. The kind that enables us to see things clearly, hear things so distinctly we can hear, in a manner of speaking, the flutter of angel wings!

We need this interior silence that can only mean self-dominion and mastery, such that we become fully aware of our true conditions, and in control of the direction of our lives. In short, it is the silence of human maturity, the type that gives us resistance to being swallowed by mindless activism.

It is the kind that makes us think properly, that links us to the world of the spiritual and the supernatural. It goes beyond the world of feelings to that of reason and opinions, in order to enter the deepest source of our convictions, and this is none other than our belief or faith. Man always lives by his faith.

It is the silence of spiritual recollection, of a soul who knows how to be a contemplative even if he is the midst of all sorts of human activity. He may be a very active person, but he also has to learn to be contemplative always.

This way, his vision of things is not limited to the sensible nor even to the intelligible, but rather goes beyond, and gets deeper and richer than these.

Of this silence, Pope John Paul II once said:

"This is what man needs today. He is often unable to be silent for fear of meeting himself, of feeling the emptiness that asks itself about meaning. Man deafens himself with noise.

"All, believers and non-believers alike, need to learn a silence that allows the Other to speak when and how he wishes, and allows us to understand his words."

One of the curses of modern life is that we are so flooded with an ocean of distractions that we don't know anymore what is real and what is not, what is meaningful and what is inane. We appear to know a lot, but we fail to be wise.

We are entangled in the world of our own making, dependent almost solely on feelings and on impressions and appearances, prone to superficiality, confusion, and error.

From here, it would take very little before evil and malice can dominate and reign supreme. And this is what we are seeing in many places these days. There is a lot of corruption and deception, a tidal wave of sensuality and pride.

Of course, the dirty, albeit exhilarating dynamism of evil continues to spin its complex web of ugly effects and consequences. More and more people are getting sick, not only physically but mainly psychologically and spiritually.

Cases of depression, of pathological obsessions, of deviant and pervert behavior are piling up. Of course, before these things happen, many fail to use their reason properly because they don't think, they just watch and see games on TV. In short, they become complacent and fail to develop their primary faculties properly.

This is not to mention that many people don't even pray, don't find time to be alone with God, even if they have all the time for their sports, games and other gimmicks.

Would it be any wonder if many lose effective control over their own passions and other faculties? They even can end up not knowing themselves anymore.

Many reasons and factor can explain this phenomenon, but surely one of them is that people are getting alienated even within themselves. Why? Because they fail to have the silence needed for proper human development.

The big challenge now is how to make ourselves respect and satisfy this need for silence. The challenge becomes even more daunting when we realize that many of us may not even feel the need for silence.

The need for silence has to be made a priority concern for everyone. We need to pray, to be able to think and gather our thoughts with some order and to attune them to the real needs of our life. We have to avoid being scatter-brained.

Even more important than that, we need to see to it that we are properly based and oriented, and this means entering the world of religion, faith and belief.

Otherwise, we will just be at the mercy of our passions and some other external factors in our environment that can lead us nowhere.

So, let's try to maintain a period of silence everyday. It's worth the effort. We need to be alone with God for us to be able to enter into proper relationship with others and to develop proper attitudes to anything in our life.