By JAME MONTI
In a recent interview concerning his new book, The Power of Silence, His Eminence Robert Cardinal Sarah observed, “Before God’s majesty, we lose our words” (Catholic World Report, October 3, 2016).
Silence is man’s humble reply to the glory and transcendence of His Creator, a reply that even the high and mighty of this world have found themselves compelled to give, as Isaiah had foretold: “…kings shall shut their mouths because of him” (Isaiah 52:15). But it is also in silence that God speaks to us.
For most of His Sacred Passion, our Lord remained silent. Pilate was amazed by this silence. During the scourging and crowning with thorns, despite the provocative insults and blasphemies of the soldiers, our Lord said nothing. During the walk to Calvary, He broke His silence only briefly to address the women weeping on His account. During the three hours that followed on the cross, Christ spoke just seven times, each time uttering no more than a few precious words.
In a passage long considered as prophetic of the birth of Christ at night in Bethlehem, the Book of Wisdom declares, “For while gentle silence enveloped all things, and night in its swift course was now half gone, thy all-powerful word leaped from heaven, from the royal throne” (Wisdom 18:14-15).
As at His birth, so too on Good Friday, our Lord accomplished His purpose in almost total silence, saying aloud almost nothing as He saved the world. “…Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7).
The sacrifice that Christ offered in silence the Church down through the ages has continued to celebrate at least partly in silence, most especially for many centuries the Roman Canon of the Mass and the sacrosanct words of consecration. While the practice of reciting the words of the Canon in a low, scarcely audible voice has not been retained in the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite, and there are sound reasons as to why the audible recitation of this prayer has its advantages, the custom has been fully preserved in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman liturgy (the “usus antiquior”).
And even in the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite, some other observances of sacred silence, such as during the offertory, have been retained at least as options.
Medieval liturgical commentators have left us a rich corpus of beautiful explanations for the silent recitation of the Canon, explanations that continue to ring true for the celebration of Mass in the Extraordinary Form.
The priest’s entrance upon the silent recitation of the Canon was for Sicard of Cremona (+1215) comparable to the High Priest’s withdrawal into the Holy of Holies in the rites of ancient Israel (Mitrale, book 3, chapter 6). Pope Innocent III (+1216) saw the silent recitation of the Canon as representing in particular Christ’s withdrawal from public view following His triumphant Palm Sunday entrance into Jerusalem in anticipation of His Passion.
Having thus begun “this private silence…in which, the tumult of words ceasing, attentive devotion is directed to God alone,” the priest should “enter into the chamber of his heart and, the door of the senses having been shut, pray to God the Father” (De sacro altaris mysterio, book 3, chapter 1, trans. in James Monti, A Sense of the Sacred, Ignatius Press, 2012, p. 57).
Insofar as the priest in persona Christi offers in the celebration of Mass the praises of Holy Mother Church to God the Father, Amalarius of Metz (+c. 850) saw the silence of the Roman Canon prefigured in the quiet, humble supplications of Hannah, the woman who became the mother of Samuel, for “Hannah was speaking in her heart; only her lips moved, and her voice was not heard” (1 Samuel 1:13; see Amalarius of Metz, Liber officialis, book 3, chapter 23, n. 11).
Silence in the liturgy of the Church Militant on Earth echoes the liturgy of the Church Triumphant in Heaven. For as the Apostle St. John relates in the Book of Revelation, the offering of incense mingled with the prayers of the saints at the altar of the heavenly sanctuary was preceded by “about half an hour” of silence (Rev. 8:1). And silence befits the House of God. In the Book of Habakkuk, we read, “…the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him” (Hab. 2:20).
Silence expresses solemnity. Silence in the liturgy, like the moments of silence in a great work of music, is not merely a void, not merely an absence of sound; the silence does indeed have a voice, for it partakes of the hushed awe of the angels. Among the examples that could be drawn from the realm of classical music, there are the pregnant pauses in the prelude to Richard Wagner’s final opera, Parsifal (an opera about the Holy Grail, the Holy Lance, and the mystery of Good Friday), pauses which heighten the drama of the stately, majestic brass fanfares that they precede.
And in the final movement of Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony, the Resurrection Symphony, it is a breathtaking silence that twice heralds the sounding of an offstage brass ensemble representing the Day of Judgment.
Even in human conversation there are such moments of expressive silence, when words are unnecessary, or when what is thought, what is felt, is beyond the spoken word.
Further evidence for the value of silence in the Catholic liturgy was recently brought to light through the findings of a team of largely Protestant scholars assembled by Bangor University (Bangor, Wales) to carry out a series of historical re-enactments of ceremonies from England’s medieval Sarum Rite.
Participants in this four-year study (2009-2013) were particularly impressed by “the strong impact of the silence” during the Roman Canon in stark contrast to the long intervals of plainchant at other points in the Sarum Mass rite (Sally Harper et al., editors, Late Medieval Liturgies Enacted: The Experience of Worship in Cathedral and Parish Church, Ashgate, 2016, p. 281). One participant noted that this silence powerfully conveyed the impression that the celebrant was praying and acting for and on behalf of the faithful (ibid., p. 261).
Of course, these were nothing more than meticulous dramatizations of the medieval Catholic liturgies, not real Masses, but the findings nonetheless offer us valuable insights as to how the external form of the Church’s rites over the centuries has efficaciously communicated the inner meaning of the rites to man’s senses — in this case through the experience of a truly meaningful, purposeful silence than underscores the Roman Canon as the “Holy of Holies” within the Mass, into which the priest enters as an alter Christus acting on our behalf.
Another important occasion for silence comes after Holy Communion. The structure of the Mass of the Roman Rite in both its traditional “Extraordinary Form” and the contemporary “Ordinary Form” points to this, for most of the prayers, the spoken words, and ceremonies of the Eucharistic Liturgy are completed before Holy Communion. Following Communion, the Mass draws to a conclusion rather quickly, almost abruptly.
Why is this? I would suggest that God in His loving Providence has inspired the Church to arrange the Mass in this manner so as to give us ample time to respond to the Real Presence of Christ in our souls with a period of silent thanksgiving. This period of silent conversation with our Lord can and should continue beyond the end of Mass.
We can see a parallel to this in the great event of the Annunciation. After the Archangel Gabriel had delivered His message to our Lady and had answered her question, and immediately upon her reply of consent to the Incarnation, he instantly departs, leaving her alone to contemplate in silent awe the breathtaking reality that God the Son had now become man within her womb and was dwelling within her (cf. Luke 1:38).
Pseudo-Mysticism
The silence of our Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament is a living silence. Stepping into a quiet church, one can palpably experience this living silence radiating from the Tabernacle. There is here a silent communication from the Lord that travels directly to the heart, directly to the soul, and has a way of virtually drowning out the ambient noises from outside the church. Everything else seems to fade away as Christ silently preaches to us anew all that He said while visibly present on Earth.
Even beyond the immediate context of the liturgy and the Holy Eucharist, silence is a staple of the spiritual life, calming the soul and the mind for prayer and the remembrance of God throughout the day.
In this we must, however, beware of the fruitless silence of pseudo-mysticism, in which silence loses its traditional Christian meaning and is reduced to nothing more than a therapeutic technique. I recall hearing one such “prayer method” being explained as requiring the practitioner to exclude even thoughts of God from his mind in order to achieve silence.
This is not prayerful silence, but rather a dangerous void into which the Eevil can enter. Genuine Christian silence welcomes the thought of God into the soul; it de-clutters the soul in order to make way for the Lord — to hear His voice.
As the solemn season of Lent draws near, may we all find in silence spent with God “a journey out of our everyday life toward the Lord” (Pope Benedict XVI, The Spirit of the Liturgy, Ignatius Press, 2000, p. 211).
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