I just finished an 8-day retreat with other Jesuits and some colleagues at the Manresa Jesuit Spiritual Renewal Centre in Pickering, Ontario.

It was a silent retreat, as are all such retreats.

Silence is a strange thing.  It's something that we both resist and crave. 

We all have responsibilities and jobs and projects that demand the opposite of silence – raising children, taking classes, working, living in family or community.  Humans live by language and words.  Books, internet, chat rooms,  e-mail, TV, video, song, literature, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, and simple heart to heart conversation.  Without words and language we die. 

In this cacophonous world, however, there is another voice that longs to be heard.  It is the voice hidden deep within that whispers, "Be still and know that I am God."  For reasons often unknown, we resist this interior call to silence.  It's no wonder.  The entry into the interior life can be a treacherous journey.  All kinds of demons and boogiemen lie in wait for the unwary traveller.  But, strangely enough, there is no other way. 

Pull yourself away to silence and you may be introduced to your own demons who are often, as Scripture says, legion.  The many voices of regret, fear, sin, and anxiety.  The voices of things said and done.  The voices of things unsaid and undone.

But the only way into life is in and through the silent life.  Jesus understood this.  Before he began his public life, Scripture says that he was drawn into the wilderness by the Spirit, where he was tempted by the Devil.  Throughout his entire life, Jesus would withdrawn into the mountains, to a deserted place to pray.  Even in his final hour, he would be drawn into the silence of the Garden of Gethsemane where he waged the final struggle with himself.  Jesus knew the power of silence. 

Wilderness is the biblical symbol for the inner silent life.  The Exodus story is a story of liberation from slavery, through the crucible of 40 years of temptation, depravation, and fear in the wilderness, through the chaos of the Red Sea, into the promised land flowing with milk and honey.  This is the paradigm of the spiritual life.  The dying and rising to new life.  The Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ is our paschal mystery. 

We all need to create a place and time of silence in our lives.  Prayer does exactly that.  Prayer invites us into the wilderness, into the silence of our hearts so that we may attune ourselves to the whispers of God.

Remember the meeting of the prophet Elijah on Mount Horeb.  God was not found in the great wind, nor in the earthquake, nor in the fire.  Only when Elijah heard the "sound of sheer silence" did he go out and stand at the entrance of his cave to meet God.

So, be still, and may your silence be filled with the Word of God.