The sound of silence

 

Introduction

Jesus bade us a first farewell on Good Friday when he died on the cross, was taken down and buried in a tomb.   After the Good Friday services, we liturgically symbolize that sad moment of history by removing the Blessed Sacrament from the tabernacle, and carrying It to some out-of-sight place in the sacristy. Then we strip the sanctuary of candle and clutter, and we throw open the doors of the tabernacle for the rest of the day. All through the day of Good Friday the emptiness within speaks out to us saying,  "He's dead.    He’s descended into hell, and is   gone!" Good Friday makes us feel a bit empty, like the tabernacle itself.

 

Jesus bade us a second farewell in the Ascension. After appearing here and there for forty days, on the day of Ascension the risen Lord led the disciples to Bethany, raised his hands and blessed them, and then ascended into heaven.  In the past we used to liturgically symbolize that as well. After the Ascension gospel, a server would abruptly snuff out the Easter candle and dramatically whisk it away out of sight to some dark closet in the sacristy.   That gesture too spoke out to us saying, "He has ascended into heaven and he is gone!" And that too strikes a note of emptiness.

 

Farewells are sad affairs. I learned that at a very early age. My father, an Italian immigrant, left a brother and a whole Italian community behind, here in Milwaukee. He migrated north to Manitowoc.  That was back in the early 1900’s. Once a year my father, my sister, and   I would make our annual visit to that far-off metropolis of Milwaukee, which for him was "Little Italy.”(By that time our mother had been taken away from us.) When the visit was over and we would bid farewell, my father always wept. And I would weep with him. I didn't know why we were weeping, but I joined in and helped along. The Orthodox theologian, Nicholas Berdaeev, says that farewells “have the taste of death about them, and are the constant reminders of the emptiness of the human situation."  Farewells are sad affairs.  But not always. The Ascension farewell is strangely different. Luke writes that after Jesus was taken out of their sight and was gone, “the apostles returned to Jerusalem with great joy” (Lk 24: 52-53). 

 

On occasions I have shared with you some of the many letters written by my mystical friend. Everyone one of them is a theological and mystical gem. (That’s why I saved them.)    In her letters dated March 7th, 1978, she writes: 

 

“Jesus departs from the disciples in Bethany on Ascension Day, and they are filled not with sadness but  ‘with great joy.’ What a strange farewell is that! The disciples return to Jerusalem in mystical Darkness and Silence. The earth is filled with his Absence. And their hearts are burning `with great joy’!” She continues, “ Jesus sends the disciples to do as he had done: to fill the world with an Absence and a Silence, with an Emptiness that heals.” (My gosh, how do you unscramble that bit of mysticism for an age like ours and for people like us who are notoriously un-mystical?)

 

Gospel: don’t fill it up.

I’ll try. My friend is writing about the Darkness, Silence and Absence that filled the Ascension event, and she capitalizes all three.  Darkness: the emptiness of light. Silence: the emptiness of sound. Absence: the emptiness of     someone we love very much but who is not with us anymore. The mystical unscramble is quite simply this:  My friend writes about the dimension of emptiness that fills all our human lives.  And she implicitly raises the question, “What do we do with the emptiness of our human condition?” And her answer is quite simply this: “You don’t fill it up.” And that too calls   for some unscrambling.

 

What did the apostles do with the emptiness of the Ascension? They did not fill it up.  They didn’t head straight for the nearest bar to drink away their sorrow. They didn't gulp down pills to lift themselves up. They didn’t fix up their pain with fixes. Momentarily orphaned by Jesus, Scripture says the apostles returned to Jerusalem and headed straight for the Temple, and there, says Luke,  “they remained in constant prayer” (Lk 24: 53). They went straight to the Temple to give their emptiness time to be filled, not with any old thing, but with something worthwhile waiting for. They went straight to the Temple to give their sorrow time to pass over into joy.

 

Culture: fill it up.

That’s what the apostles did with their emptiness. What do we do with? Our culture says,  “Why for God’s sake, you fill it up. You fill it up with this or that. You fill it up even with any old thing if needs be, but by all means, you fill it up.”

 

(Feelings)

What do you do with the empty feelings in your life? With your boredom?  Culture says you fill it up: you jump into the car and go. You go anywhere, as along as you go. What do you do with your loneliness? Culture says you fill it up: you fill it up with anything, even with a gang or a mob. What do you do with your melancholy? Culture says you fill it up: you find your self a high or you fix your self with a fix.

 

(Things)

What do you with the emptiness of life? Our shopping culture says,  “Why for God’s sake, you fill it up.” You go to the malls, and you fill up your emptiness with things and toys, and more things and toys. But then of course you have to go to work, and then you have to go to work again and again.  As that bumper sticker reads, “I owe, I owe; so it’s off to work I go.” And in filling up the emptiness with more and more things and toys, we exhaust the human spirit.  My Franciscan tradition has always romanticized “holy poverty” as the emptiness of things that refreshes the human spirit.

 

(Food)

What do you with the empty feeling in your    stomach (which means either that you are hungry or you are anxious about something or you are frustrated)?  Our supermarket culture, with all its   munchies and chewies, says, “Why for God’s sake, you fill.” You fill it up with anything, any old thing, even junk food.  And so we now have on hand a veritable national crisis: overweight.  Fasting too has always figured in to the monastic tradition, and has always been an important ingredient of the spiritual life.  The spiritual idea behind fasting is this:  you make yourself empty in order to make some room for the Spirit. Had the Room in the Inn been empty, there would have been room for Jesus.

 

(Noise)

What do you do with silence -- that emptiness of sound?  Our culture says,  “Why for God’s sake, you fill it up.”  You turn something on (TV or CD or VCR) and you turn it up.  On hot summer evenings, you turn up the rap or rev up your motorcycle or screech your tires on hot cement. Culture fills up the silence with noise, in order to turn down the “sound of silence,” which has become unbearable for us.  When you’re waiting, for example, on the phone (because “all our operators are busy with other customers, and your call will be taken in the order in which it was received”), you’re switched on to music, just to make sure you don’t suffer withdrawal symptoms if “the sound of silence” last too long, which it always does.

 

Silence (that emptiness of sound) has always been a great monastic tradition!  Trappist monks are famous for their vow of silence: their vow not to talk, not to babble on and on; their vow to turn things down or to turn them off completely, in order not to shatter “the sound of silence” which at any time might carry the voice of God for them. Monastic tradition believes that silence can heal, and you don’t fill it up.

 

I believe that  “the sound of silence” can help heal the inner city.  I believe that salvation can come to the inner city only if it turns down its boom-boxes and stops shooting baskets, and start listening to the    "Sound of Silence" rising from a center down deep within. I believe that in that "Sound of Silence” inner-city dwellers would be able to hear the secret that will enable them to break out of their benign despair and heal them.

 

And the last number of years seems to indicate that this is equally true for the suburbs. It has an emptiness all its own, and it has its own ways of filling up the emptiness, maybe more dignified than boom-boxes or basket balls. The suburbs has its own kind of noise to turn down, and it too is in need of turning up the “sound of silence” to hear the secret that will enable them to break out of their dolled-up despair.  That seems to be part of the message coming out of the school massacres that always like to take place in suburbs.

 

Conclusion

(You wait for it)

 

Culture says you fill up life’s emptiness. The Gospel always invites us to be counter-cultural. The Gospel says it is OK emptiness is OK.  It’s OK to be bored and lonely and depressed at times. It’s OK to be lost for a while. It’s OK not to have all the things you want. It's OK to be hungry. It’s OK to be quiet.  It’s even OK to be grieving because someone you love very much has   said farewell.  Emptiness is   OK.

 

You don’t dash off to fill it up with any old thing.  You don’t dash off to fill it up with “any old kind of fullness.” Instead you go to the Temple, and there you pray and wait in hope for your fullness. There you wait to be filled not with "any old thing" but with nothing less than a Pentecostal fullness, a fullness “from on High.”  That’s not a fullness that doesn’t leave you empty nor does it leave you stuffed. That’s a fullness that heals you.

 

You go to the Temple, and there you pray and wait in hope for your fullness. And as you do, you get in touch with a center down deep within yourself, and you make the consoling discovery that you're not as empty as you think you are.

 

[1]

 


[1] It is interesting to note that up until the fourth century, the feasts of Ascension and Pentecost (the gift of the Descent of the Holy Spirit -- Sunday after next) were but one feast. That communicated the sense of one divine transaction in which the absence and emptiness caused by the farewell of the Ascension is exchanged, is filled up, not with any old fullness, but with nothing less than a fullness ”from on High” i.e. the gift of the Holy Spirit.  An ancient antiphon cries out: "O Admirabile Commercium!"  Oh Admirable Commerce! Oh blessed Deal! Oh what a bargain! The emptiness of the Ascension exchanged for the fullness of Pentecost.