Day 22: The Need for Silence

This past weekend in our parish bulletin, I wrote about, among other things, the need for silence in our church.  I wrote:  "The world is afraid of silence, and sometimes we drag the noise of the world into church with us."  I am blessed to have my office some 25 steps from our Blessed Sacrament Chapel (I know because I just got up from my chair and counted).  This morning the phone wouldn't stop ringing.  The garderners came early to cut the lawn.  And all that happened before I got to my church office.  Things didn't get much better there.  That's when I decided to disconnect. I left my cell phone on my desk and walked those 25 steps to the chapel to just sit there in silence.  Retreat. Refocus. Reset. Refresh.  "Learn to be a lover of silence," a holy Nigerian priest told me last year during a confession.  Those words have resounded in my heart since last summer.  We may not all have the Blessed Sacrament so close to us (but making the effort to visit surely helps), yet we can all have places we go when we need silence.  Someone told me the other day that they go to the bathroom in their place of work to pray.  Others go for a walk.  There is so much noise around us, yet God only speaks to us in silence.  Find that quiet place this Lent, and learn to be a lover of silence.