Silence

“The failure to be receptive in silence to the reality of a revealed Christian truth usually means that we do not grow in contemplative faith. A realization of the truth of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, for example, requires such a silence in our soul and a hunger of soul for the Lord that intensifies only in       silence. The truth of Jesus’ bodily presence in a chapel or church does not respond to an analytical effort. There is no act of unraveling or deciphering this truth, no evidence by which to decode the mystery. Nothing tangible supports the act of faith in gazing on the Eucharist during Eucharistic adoration. We can know by faith with a conviction of indisputable surety that he is there in the immediacy of his presence. But a silence of the soul is required for the deeper interiority of this conviction. The yearning of the soul for a reality that defies the experience of the senses demands silence. Indeed, there can be no deeper awareness of Our Lord’s real presence without this silence. The silence in typically a state of subdued awe at being in the
invisible presence of God himself.”