I always hesitate to recommend books to people unless they particularly ask for a specific recommendation.  I hesitate because everyone has different tastes and what one finds particularly interesting may be boring or not worthwhile to another.  I want to go out on a bit of limb though and make a recommendation for a book that you may want to consider reading over this coming summer.  It is called “The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise” by Robert Cardinal Sarah with Nicolas Diat.  Cardinal Sarah is the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.  It has been recently published by Ignatius Press and is set-up in an interview format.  I have found it to be truly an inspiring book and one full of material for reflection and contemplation and a book that speaks a profound truth which is missing in our society today. 

It will come as no great surprise to anyone that we live in a world full of noise, noise that both assaults our ears and noise which can assault the rest of our senses.  Our modern world seems to be devoid of silence, because of modern machinery and technology and the fast-paced motion of our society it seems as if silence is something that remains an unattainable dream.  This lack of silence, this preponderance of noise has deep ramifications for our spiritual life and our encounter with God, as Cardinal Sarah writes, “in silence, not in turmoil and noise, God enters into the innermost depths of our being.”  This book not only lays out what has happened to our society which has caused such constant noise and chattering and activity, but he also points out how this affects our relationship with God and what it has done to us as human beings and reminds us of the great gift that is silence. 

Cardinal Sarah, in this book, encourages people of faith to “join a sort of resistance movement.  What will become of our world if it does not look for intervals of silence?  Interior rest and harmony can flow only from silence.  Without it, life does not exist.  The greatest mysteries of the world are born and unfold in silence.  How does nature develop?  In the greatest silence.  A tree grows in silence, and springs of water flow at first in the silence of the ground.  The sun that rises over the earth in its splendor and grandeur warms us in silence.  What is extraordinary is always silent.”  For Cardinal Sarah, silence is not an end in itself, it is the means to an end – it is an opening of a door to God who so often remains silent and allows for Him to speak to us in the silence.

I have often thought of summer as being the Sabbath of the year.  Just as a week has its Sabbath day of rest, so too does the year as a whole – it is summer.  On this Memorial Day weekend we traditionally kick off the summer season as the weather (hopefully!) warms up, as school winds down and as summer vacations begin.  Part of the Sabbath is quiet reflection and communication with God and it seems to me that summer should encourage us to do that over the course of these warm months – of creating space and time for silence, of stepping back from words and noise and activity to break the dictatorship of noise, in order to enter more fully into the silence so as to encounter God more completely and fully.   
 

I don’t know about you, but it seems like just yesterday that we were entering the home stretch of the Lenten Season and celebrating the Sacred Paschal Triduum and Easter and here we are, now, in the final few weeks of the Easter Season.  As I mentioned in a bulletin article a few weeks ago, the Easter Season is full of many celebrations – Baptisms, Confirmation, First Communion, May Crowning and, in just a couple of weeks, Graduation.  At the end of the Easter Season we have two major celebrations – the first will be celebrated next weekend, the Ascension of Our Lord into Heaven.  The following weekend we will celebrate the end of the Easter Season with the celebration of Pentecost.  In order to help direct our thoughts to these great mysteries I wanted to include a reflection from the great Doctor of the Church, St. Augustine on the Ascension.  Perhaps over the coming days we can spend some time in meditating on these words and preparing ourselves spiritually for the Ascension.  These words come from a homily of St. Augustine on the Ascension:

“Our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven; let our hearts ascend with him. Listen to the words of the Apostle: If you have risen with Christ, set your hearts on the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; seek the things that are above, not the things that are on earth.

For just as he remained with us even after his ascension, so we too are already in heaven with him, even though what is promised us has not yet been fulfilled in our bodies.

Christ is now exalted above the heavens, but he still suffers on earth all the pain that we, the members of his body, have to bear. He showed this when he cried out from above: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? and when he said: I was hungry and you gave me food.

Why do we on earth not strive to find rest with him in heaven even now, through the faith, hope and love that unites us to him? While in heaven he is also with us; and we while on earth are with him. He is here with us by his divinity, his power and his love. We cannot be in heaven, as he is on earth, by divinity, but in him, we can be there by love.

He did not leave heaven when he came down to us; nor did he withdraw from us when he went up again into heaven. The fact that he was in heaven even while he was on earth is borne out by his own statement: No one has ever ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven.
These words are explained by our oneness with Christ, for he is our head and we are his body. No one ascended into heaven except Christ because we also are Christ: he is the Son of Man by his union with us, and we by our union with him are the sons of God. So the Apostle says: Just as the human body, which has many members, is a unity, because all the different members make one body, so is it also with Christ. He too has many members, but one body.

Out of compassion for us he descended from heaven, and although he ascended alone, we also ascend, because we are in him by grace. Thus, no one but Christ descended and no one but Christ ascended; not because there is no distinction between the head and the body, but because the body as a unity cannot be separated from the head.”