There was a sharp divide in my home growing up about the necessity of background noise. There were some in the family who couldn’t get anything done unless the tv or radio was on in the background, even if they weren’t actively listening to it. There were others who had to sequester themselves in a quiet area in order to do their work. Such are the trials of living with other people: compromises abound.
 
I generally fell into the group that preferred background noise, but at some point, I believe during seminary, I made the decision to try to do more in silence. I found that the quiet time I had in prayer in the chapel was the most fruitful, and so I tried to work that into other aspects of my life. If I was working outside, or traveling in the car, I would forego music in order to make space for meditation and prayer.
 
Lent calls us to rededicate ourselves to fasting, almsgiving, and prayer. While fasting and almsgiving can be increased primarily through effort and discipline, creating a spirit of prayer can be somewhat more difficult, and we don’t always know where to start if we want a deeper prayer life. The place to start, quite frankly, is entering into silence.

In his recent book Power of  Silence (which I highly recommend), Cardinal Robert Sarah says that quieting our soul and driving out distraction is the only sure path to hearing the voice of God and responding to His call in our lives. “Nestling in silence against the heart of God, with the open Bible over our head like the wings of the Holy Spirit, is still the best antidote, the one thing necessary to chase away from our interior territory all that is useless, superfluous, worldly, and even our own self.”
 
During Lent our region changes some liturgical practices in order to create more silence in the way we pray. We sometimes omit the recessional hymn in order to go forth in a spirit of prayer and silence. During Lent the Church also asks that we only use instruments to support singing, and not play strictly instrumental music. As we see these changes in the way we pray, we should also make the effort to not just notice the silence, but also to enter into it. As we continue this season of Lent, may we do the hard work of quieting our hearts so that we can hear the still small voice of God calling us to conversion, so that we can serve him more faithfully day by day as we journey towards the celebration of Our Lord’s victory over death.
 
Prayers always,
Fr. McCullough