The Power of Silence by Robert Cardinal Sarah

Author:Robert Cardinal Sarah [Diat, Nicolas; Sarah, Robert Cardinal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Spiritual & Religion
ISBN: 9781681497587
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2017-11-10T05:00:00+00:00

Before the depth of the mystery of God, Saint Augustine writes in his Expositions on the Psalms, we experience the limitations of words. And so we rejoice wordlessly. We cannot name the ineffable God: “If you cannot tell him forth in speech, yet ought not to remain silent, what else can you do but jubilate? In this way the heart rejoices without words and the boundless expanse of rapture is not circumscribed by syllables”, the Holy Doctor says.

247. From this joyous experience of mystery is born sacred song. The chant of the Christian liturgies ought to distance itself from certain verbose hymns so as to rediscover the contemplative grandeur of the chant of the monks of the East and the West.

Gregorian chant is not contrary to silence. It has issued from it and leads to it. I would even say that it is as though woven of silence. At the Grande Chartreuse, what a moving experience it is to chant with the monks, in the half-light of the evening, the great Salve Regina at Vespers! The last notes die out one by one in a filial silence, enveloping our trust in the Virgin Mary. This experience is essential for understanding Joseph Ratzinger’s reflection in his book, A New Song for the Lord: “Silence. . . lets the unspeakable become song and also calls on the voices of the cosmos for help so that the unspoken may become audible. This means that church music, coming from the Word and the silence perceived in it, always presupposes a new listening to the whole richness of the Logos.”

During the reign of Paul VI, in 1969, did the liturgical reform cause a loss of silence in the liturgy?

248. As Cardinal Godfried Danneels remarked in a conference with a provocative title, “An Attitude of Service, not of Manipulation”, “the main fault of the Western liturgy, as it is celebrated, is that it is too wordy.” I think that it is necessary to pose the question at the root of the matter. It is not just about artificially adding a little more silence in the Church’s liturgies.

Of course, the liturgy provides for times of silence that must be respected, before each prayer, before the Confíteor, after the reading of the Word of God, and after Communion. These times allow the soul to breathe. The offertory, too, can be a silent moment.

249. I am familiar with the regrets expressed by many young priests who would like the Canon of the Mass to be recited in complete silence. The unity of the whole assembly, communing with the words pronounced in a sacred murmur, was a splendid sign of a contemplative Church gathered around the sacrifice of her Savior. In The Spirit of the Liturgy, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote:

Anyone who has experienced a church united in the silent praying of the Canon will know what a really filled silence is. It is at once a loud and penetrating cry to God and a Spirit-filled act of prayer. Here everyone does pray the Canon together, albeit in a bond with the special task of the priestly ministry.

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