Into the Silent Land

I think Lent is a time given to us to enter "into the silent land." This is a time when we take a good, hard look at ourselves and at Christ in deep discernment. "Who are You?" we ask the Lord. "And who am I?

I think my Lenten "theme" this year will be silence. Everything I fast from, everything I build into my day, everything I read, and the way that I pray will be molded around this idea that we need silence. One book that I recommend to everyone, which bears the title of this post, was written by a graduate professor of mine and a extraordinary homilist. He leads the Catholic Christian deeper into the practice of contemplation in an accessible way.

I used to be diligent about my practice of contemplative prayer: twenty minutes in the morning and twenty minutes in the afternoon. And then life consumed me, and it has been years since I have really been regularly silent with the Lord. But again, the Church provides us with the seasons to start over and to continually prepare ourselves for our encounter with Christ.

I said to my soul, be will, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, for you are not yet ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be light, and the stillness the dancing.

T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets