The Nature of Silence

    The Lord stands before Pilate. The Lord stands before His accusers in the Sanhedrin. The Lord stands before Herod. He is silent. "Like a lamb before his shearers, he was silent and opened not his mouth." Yes, indeed, the closest thing to this silence that we experience in this world is the silence of nature. It is a silence without hostility, nor sorrow. It is a silence full of love. Or, for that very silence, is not "peace" a better word. The forest is alive with the sounds of singing birds, along with the sound of the wind as it moves through the thick canopy. Yet none of those songs or gusts breaks the silence. No, rather, they are part of the silence, this special silence that attests to the truth of being. I count it as one of the greatest gifts that I learned to love this silence. From an early age, I can recall feeling at one with it. My own sounds too were part of it—treading a hiking path through a pine forest, with the sound of the cones crunching beneath my feet. Man is not alien to the silence of nature (the truth of being). No, he can even be part of it, if God wills. Sound does not break the silence. It is part of it. The only thing that would shatter the silence is the presence of untruth. Falsehood would shatter the silence. God has given me the privilege of being a part of the truth of being. I am also the only one who can dash it in pieces and tread it underfoot like the pine cones. It is my awesome, and fatal, choice.

    The silence of nature is the mother of prayer. What could be more natural than union with God? Yes, it is supernatural, but nature was made for super-nature. Our great teacher is experience, in this matter, as in so many others. When we remove from our hearts everything that breaks the silence, all those things that shatter the truth of being, then we are open to God. We recognize the beauty of nature, this truth of being, and at the same time we recognize the defect of our own nature. Being in silence, without hostility and sorrow, reveals to us clearly the damage within us. In my distant memories, I recall that silence was a punishment. It was banishment—being set apart for having been bad. It was an agony and an eternity, even five minutes of such exile. Yet, these little childish banishments taught me nothing of silence. They taught me to be quiet. Only if we are quiet can we hear the silence.

    This is all so much nonsense, then! These words mean nothing. What can "silence" mean if it includes sound? No, no, it is simple. Silence is what is natural. It is truth.

Silence of Several Kinds

When the Lord stands before Pilate, He is silent. But what kind of a silence is this. Silence, we know from experience, differs according to kind.

There is the silence of bitter hostility--the silence of adversaries, who hold their peace lest, if they were to speak, they would come to blows. When this kind of silence envelopes a household, love can no longer live there, for there is no room. No, the silence fills every corner, every crack in the flooring, and every angle of every eave. Love needs room, and this silence gives it none. It is not silence by nature, but din. It may be silent, but it will eventually burst into sound. It is pressure longing for release. Given time, it will explode.

I have some experience with this silence. As a child, it was not much present in my house—save but from time to time, but I knew households of friends upon which it had settled like a wet blanket. They were kingdoms of blame, where expectations were never met, and needs were daily disregarded.

This was not the silence of the Lord Jesus before Pilate. No, that silence is "the still, small voice." You know the one—manifest not in fire, nor wind, nor the shaking of the earth.

It is not the silence of sorrow. That is a silence that would speak, but, somehow, can never find the words. It is not a silence, like that hostile silence, which is waiting to break into sound. No, it retreats further and further away from expression, until it sinks to the lowest point of despair. Despair no longer wants to speak. It is grievance that no longer wants to be heard. It wants only to sit alone, neglected and disregarded.

So, what is this silence before Pilate? What is this still, small voice? It is the silence of God. The closest thing we have to it in our experience is the silence of nature, for nature has learned it from her Master. Anyone who has walked in the forest has heard it. Anyone who has lain in the warm sunshine on a beach has experienced it. It is the presence of truth. It is a silence that is full of love. It is also full of meaning. No one can doubt its meaning, because no one can escape its peace.

Christ's Compassion Visits Us in our Far Country

When we consider the parable of the Prodigal Son, we are invited to remember the prodigality, which the Lord shows in His love for us.  We are used to considering the example of the Prodigal Son as a paradigm of human sinfulness, but naturally we can see in this figure as well a shadow of the One “Who became sin for our sake.” Just as we see the Prodigal Son go into the sinful land of the “far country,” so too does the Only-Begotten Son of God descend to us in the “far country” of our sinful nature. He, by means of an infinite condescension becomes man for us, and walks among us as one of us. He lives an earthly life among us, both before and after His resurrection from the dead, in which He travels from place to place and teaches us precepts of salvation. He Who cannot experience death in His Divine Nature willingly enters into suffering and death in His human nature, so that He can destroy Death from within and reveal the resurrection.

     Last Sunday, in connection with the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, we considered the symbolism of the iconostas, the fundamental division of Creation itself into the material and spiritual worlds.  We noted at the time the constant communication between these two worlds, which, though different, nevertheless constitute one single Creation. The iconostas has doors through which there is frequent movement from one side of the barrier to the other.

     Today, in the parable of the Prodigal Son, we see the greatest example of that communication and union between the material and spiritual worlds, for the Son of God descends into our far country, our fallen world, in order to prodigally spend all of His grace (that is His Life) on us sinners.  This Divine Visitation, which is our salvation, was long expected by the Patriarchs and the Prophets, who prayed ceaselessly that the time of that Visitation be hastened.  The Prophet Isaiah, for example, cries out: “Let the heavens open, and let the clouds rain down the Just One, may the earth be engendered, and may she bud forth a Saviour (45:8).” Nevertheless, for millennia, the heavens remained closed, the life-giving rain was not sent forth, as God awaited the proper time to fulfill His promises. 

     In just the same way, according to the ustav, when we begin the Divine Liturgy, the doors of the iconostas remain closed, and our responses to the litany (Lord, have mercy) represent the prayers and supplications offered by the Patriarchs and Prophets who awaited their salvation with great longing and expectation. We are able to join our prayers to theirs, because, in the same way, we long for our individual experience of salvation to be manifest to us.

     We proclaim His birth and His coming among us in the hymn “Only-Begotten Son,” but His presence remains hidden from our eyes, just as the Christ remained hidden even to His own people Israel for the space of three decades. Finally, at the beginning of the Third Antiphon of the Divine Liturgy, the doors of the iconostas are opened for the Little Entrance.  It is then that we behold in a mystical fashion the Son of God coming to our “far country” to teach us the way of salvation contained in the Divine Gospel.  The Gospel tells us that He went all around Galilee preaching and teaching in the synagogues, curing diseases and casting out demons. At the beginning of the Little Entrance, after opening the Royal Doors, the priest makes three bows before the Gospel Book, as a reminder of the threefold great degradation into which human beings had fallen: death, pain and disease (both spiritual and physical), and slavery to the demons. The Little Entrance of the Divine Liturgy is the sign of that great mystery that Christ came among us in order to spend His grace upon us, to free us and to lift us up.  

     In the procession of the Little Entrance, the Gospel Book is led by the light of a candle or oil lamp, recalling the prophetic ministry of St. John the Forerunner and Baptist.  The Lord Jesus Himself says of St. John the Baptist in the Gospel According to St. John: “He was a bright and shining lamp, and you rejoiced for a while to live in his light.” The same Gospel, however, also says of John: “He himself was not the Light, but he was sent to bear witness to the Light.”

     The Little Entrance of the Divine Liturgy, the sign of that journey of mercy, which the Son of God took in order to visit us in our “far country” is a challenge for us.  We live in an age in which the great majority of people have ceased to ask or be interested in the great questions of human life: “What is the meaning of this life and of this Creation?” Our world has abandoned the love of Wisdom, and has left us only with a concern for feathering our own nests in a quest for “quality of life.” How far we have traveled in our “far country” from the God Who comes to us in our sinful world to “seek and to save what was lost.” That is, after all, the way that He Himself defines His mission: “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.” If we are seriously and deeply committed to following Christ, then that ought to be our mission too. We need to seek and recover the love of Wisdom, which we lost when we decided to go into our “far country.” “Feathering our nests” is an impossibility for us, because Christ did not live for Himself. Neither, then, can we.