The path of prayer: in silence, listen to the word
Man expresses his fundamental religious dimension in listening, but this attitude takes root and develops in silence.
Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, brilliant interpreter of Christian spiritualism, wrote: “Today's state of the world, the whole of life are sick. If I were a doctor and one asked me for advice, I would reply -Create silence! Bring the man to silence! - "
It is therefore necessary to return to silence, to re-educate ourselves to silence.
Silence allows the being to say what it is, to talk about itself in total transparency.
A medieval abbot of the thirteenth century left us a beautiful letter on silence.
He presents the Trinity to us as a friend of silence, saying: “Consider how much the Trinity approves the discipline of silence.
The Father loves silence because by generating the ineffable Word he asks that the ear of the heart be intent on understanding the arcane language, so the silence of creatures must be continuous in order to hear the eternal word of God.
The Word also logically requires that silence be practiced. He has assumed our humanity and therefore our language, so as to transmit the treasures of his wisdom and science to us.
The Holy Spirit revealed the Word through tongues of fire.
The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are like seven silences, which silence and extirpate from the soul all the corresponding vices and enable the ears of the heart to discern and welcome words and actions of the Word made man.
In the arcane silences of the Trinity, the almighty divine Word descends from its royal seats and hands itself over to the believing soul. Therefore silence immerses us in the Trinitarian experience ”.
Let us invoke Mary, Woman of silence, the most exemplary hearer of the Word, so that we too, like Her, listen and welcome the Word of life, which is the Risen Jesus and open our hearts to the inner dialogue with God, every day more.
Prayer notes
A wise Indian monk explains his technique for dealing with distractions during prayer:
“When you pray, it is as if you become like a big tree, which has roots in the earth and which raises its branches towards the sky.
On this tree there are many small monkeys that move, squeak, jump from branch to branch. They are your thoughts, desires, worries.
If you want to catch the monkeys to block them or chase them off the tree, if you start chasing them, a storm of leaps and shouts will break out on the branches.
You must do this: leave them alone, instead fix your gaze not on the monkey, but on the leaf, then on the branch, then on the trunk.
Every time the monkey distracts you, go back to peacefully looking at the leaf, then the branch, then the trunk, go back to yourself.
This is the only way to find the center of prayer ".
One day, in the desert of Egypt, a young monk tormented by many thoughts that assailed him during prayer, went to ask for advice from Saint Anthony, the father of the hermits:
"Father, what should I do to resist the thoughts that take me away from prayer?"
Antonio took the young man with him, they went up to the top of the dune, turned to the east, from where the desert wind blew, and said to him:
"Open your cloak and close in the desert wind!"
The boy replied: "But my father, it is impossible!"
And Antonio: “If you can't catch the wind, which you also feel from which direction it blows, how do you think you can capture your thoughts, which you don't even know where they come from?
You don't have to do anything, just go back and fix your heart on God. "
I am not my thoughts: there is a self deeper than thoughts and distractions, deeper than emotions and will, something that all religions have always called the heart.
There, in that deeper self, which comes before all divisions, there is the door of God, where the Lord comes and goes; there the simple prayer is born, the short prayer, where duration does not count, but where the instant of the heart opens onto the eternal and the eternal insinuates itself into the instant.
There your tree rises and rises towards the sky.