The Gift of Silence (III)
From the time of Elijah through the period of classical prophecy, God continued to reveal Himself through His Word of blessing and judgment. At the same time, silence was increasingly perceived as something negative: the absence of God’s voice and thus of His presence. “The land of silence” became synonymous with Sheol, the place of the dead where, by definition, the life-giving God is not to be found (Ps 88:11-13; 93:17, LXX). God’s judgment pronounced against the nations includes the withering command: “Sit in silence, and go into darkness, daughter Chaldea!” (Isa 47:5). Silence is darkness, and that darkness is death.
Finally, Israel itself experiences such a judgment, when the tongues of prophets fall silent as God withdraws His prophetic Word from the people’s midst. (The post-Exilic Psalm 73:9 laments, “We do not see our signs; there is no longer any prophet…”; cf. 1 Macc 14:41, 2 Baruch 85:3, for whom “the prophets are sleeping.”)
Yet even in the Old Testament silence is recognized to have a profoundly spiritual value. “Be angry but do not sin,” the psalmist admonishes, “commune with your own hearts on your bed, and be silent” (Ps 4:4). The Septuagint (LXX) or Greek version of the Hebrew Bible expresses the deeper meaning of this verse by slightly modifying the translation: “Be angry, and do not sin; for what you say in your hearts feel compunction on your beds” (4:5).
Genuine compunction arises out of the silence and solitude of one’s own bed, where, as St Augustine declares, the heart opens to the outpouring of divine love through the Holy Spirit.
The final word on silence, as it was experienced in ancient Israel, is that of the prophet Zephaniah: “Be silent before the Lord God! For the day of the Lord is at hand” (Zeph 1:7). Silence possesses an eschatological quality insofar as it prepares both heart and mind to receive God in His final coming. The day of the Lord is a day of judgment, symbolized by thunder and fury. But it is also a day of vindication, blessing and the bestowal of everlasting peace. These are qualities both given and received in silence.
Israel perceived the silence of the prophets to be a sign of God’s judgment upon the people’s rebellion and faithlessness. For early Christians, on the other hand, the falling silent of Israel’s prophets presaged a new creation and a new revelation. As St Ignatius of Antioch expressed it some eighty years after our Lord’s death and resurrection, “There is one God who manifested Himself through Jesus Christ His Son, who is His Word, proceeding from silence…” (Mag 8:2).
God speaks out of silence at the original creation; He does the same with the new creation in Jesus Christ. The Word of God, whose creative power brought all things from non-existence into being, brings about the new creation of the Church, the universal Body of Christ. From this point on, the Church will be the primary locus of God’s creative activity and self-revelation. It is there that the heart can acquire the gift of silence. And it is there that silence resolves into the inner stillness that allows us truly to hear—and thus to obey—the voice of God.
~Adapted from the Very Rev. John Breck, Life in Christ, Orthodox Church in America (oca.org), February 01, 2005
