My Turn: Tuning out the noise in humanity and faith
Be Quiet!
My son Jacob just turned 29. His dream job was to join the Charlotte Fire Department. He became a volunteer firefighter when he turned 14, and all the hopes and dreams of his young life were geared toward becoming a Charlotte firefighter.
One evening while Jacob was in high school, I happened by our bonus room, and it sounded like a war was going on in there. I went in and sure enough there was. Jacob was on his X Box attacking a U Boat with other attackers online. He was on his phone and listening to music all at the same time. Directly in front of him was an open textbook. I said, “Son, what in the world are you doing?” He said, “Daddy, I’m studying for a test!”
I said, “Son there is no way you can pass a test studying like this” and he said, “Yes I can.”
And by cracky, he did too. I was to learn later that his schoolhouse had a very liberal policy for retaking tests.
Meanwhile the scene shifts to the Charlotte Fire Academy. Jacob got his dream job. But it came with tests too and their pass/fail policy wasn’t as generous as the one at the schoolhouse. If you failed one of theirs, you could retake it once. If you passed you were good. If you failed, you were gone. And if you failed a test after that, you were gone too.
It was at this point in his life Jacob later told me that he actually learned how to study.
In our humanity we love noise. We have Iphones and ear buds. We can sit and scroll through the Tik and the Toks, and the book of Faces, and the X what was once known as Twitter. We have our jobs and our friends and live in a busy world where we work and play and there is always something left to do. And we love it and all the noise it generates.
In the Gospel we find Jesus living in the same sort of world. He obviously didn’t have electronic devices, but He had a mission to proclaim the Gospel and bring salvation to the world. And He knew He only had a short time to do it. Every moment of His life was consumed by His ministry. Great throngs of people surrounded him as he taught them, cured the sick, worked miracles, and cast out demons. But before everything else, Jesus took time daily to separate himself from the crowd, from His disciples, from the noise and cares of His ministry to be alone in a quiet place with God.
He prayed In the early morning while it was still dark and in solitary places. He prayed on top of mountains and in the desert. In His humanity, Jesus needed time to rest and refresh. In His Divinity He needed time to be alone with God.
In the Gospel, Jesus instructs us to do the same thing. In Matthew 6:16, Jesus tells us that when we pray, we are to go into our inner room, and after we shut the door to pray. We don’t have to climb mountains. Or even build inner rooms.
It is important to note that the language of God is silence. In 1 Kings, God tells the prophet Elijah to go the top of Mt. Horeb to speak to him. And behold the Lord was passing by. A great wind came breaking rocks. But the Lord wasn’t in the wind. A great earthquake came, but Lord wasn’t in the earthquake. And then a fire came, but the Lord wasn’t in the fire. But after the fire came the sound of gentle glowing. It was then that Elijah encountered the Lord.
In our humanity, we too need time to rest and refresh ourselves. And we also need time daily to pray and be alone with Divinity. Even if you’re reading this and don’t believe in God, in your humanity you still need that quiet time daily to rest and refresh. And then perhaps like Elijah, from the silence you can encounter God.
St. Teresa of Avila in her Prayer of Quiet tells us that in this type of prayer our soul experiences extraordinary peace and rest, accompanied by delight and pleasure contemplating God as present. Which certainly makes it worth trying!
In the end, the only test we really need to pass in life is establishing a relationship with Christ and to live holy lives. The only way to study and pass that test is by spending quiet time with the Master.
Deacon William S. “Bill” Melton, Jr. is assigned to St. Michael Catholic Church, Gastonia. He can be reached at 704-862-8982 or at wsmelton@stmccg.org.
This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: My Turn: Tuning out the noise in humanity and faith
