from Dom Hubert van Zeller

Ultimate intimacy, as St. Augustine and his mother St. Monica discovered while looking out of a window at Ostia, is not a sharing of words or impressions but a sharing of silence.

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According to a man’s temperament or mood, silence is either an emptiness, a luxury, a burden, or very nearly a prayer. If it is an emptiness it can be filled by love; if it is a luxury it can be corrected by love; if it is very nearly a prayer it can be directed by love toward the purest prayer. It can become the still, wordless response to the Spirit, to Love itself.

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If only to counteract the incessant boom of the world with its subcultures, silence is more than ever needed today. But it has more than opposition-value; it is a good in its own right. To the life of prayer it is a necessity.

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Silence is the maintenance-man of the interior life, the one who goes deep into the recesses of self and who knows all the dangerous places, exposes the weaknesses, tests the foundations and repairs them.

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Lacking silence and a measure of solitude I can live completely ignorant of my ingratitude, masks of hypocracy, baseness, and false autonomy. Given silence and a measure of solitude I see my faults without having to look for them.

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Silence is not a vacuum but a womb. The message of the Incarnation was phrased in silence.

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As an arrow shot into the dark pierces the dark but does not dispel it, so prayer finds its object through passing through, but not dispelling, the blackest clouds on its way to God.

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Just as when tempted we can count on getting enough grace to resist, so in darkness we can count on getting enough light to muddle along in the right direction. But no more.

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Unless darkness is at least for some time our lot we shall always believe that by force of character we shall win through. Darkness convinces us that only God can bring us through and that we have no force of character.

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When Jesus thought of the birds of the air He did not think of a flock but of each one. When He thought of the grass He did not think of a lawn but of each blade. So when he preached to the multitude he addressed each soul.

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In giving expression to love, suffering comes nearer to prayer than anything else. But it is not prayer. Nothing is prayer but prayer.

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Of the beatitudes, five imply suffering while the remaining three would be difficult to arrive at without it.

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If human love cannot be thought of apart from self-sacrifice, why should divine love be any different? Prayer opens up the possibilities of this principle.

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When resented and fought against, pain leads to self-pity, isolationism, the search for compensations. When accepted it leads to sanctity.

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Pain is peripheral. To be defeated by pain is central.

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Relatively few are called to martyrdom. Relatively few bear the marks of the stigmata upon their bodies. But all are given the opportunity of directing toward God such pains as they are sent.

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Obedience is never so sanctifying as when it is ridiculed as being old fashioned. Error is never so seductive as when it is backed by what nice, kind, clever people are thinking today.

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Belonging, being at home in an environment, is a joint achievement. The more weight I give to my own selfish and negative emotions, the less I give to the interests and lives of others. They have to belong too.

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NOTE: These ideas for meditation are from one of Dom Hubert van Zeller’s many books, entitled Glimpses. Every one of his books is good.