Many fear an emptiness that silence sometimes sustains. There is, however, a silence that is not empty. A vulnerable silence is shared in the glancing recognition of hearts that love one another. Something too great for mere words lives in the reassuring hand offered to the broken soul. More than any word can convey is quiet solidarity that one offers a friend in death.

Because our hearts ache for a silence that we do not have, some seek pathways that would still the unquenchable gnaw of unfulfilled desire. Some strive to be mindful of the present moment in an effort to find relief from their tormenting thoughts and memories. Others strive for a psychic state to set themselves above the turmoil of the day to day grind. Others pursue the next evolutionary step for human consciousness with the hopes of charting a new spiritual course. Yet all of these kinds of silence, no matter how effective in consoling and surmounting painful exigencies, cannot avoid the finality of death and its disintegrating power. These natural modes of interior serenity cannot overcome sin or forgive it — and are, therefore, as subject to its futility as is every other unaided human activity.

There is, however, a silence that heals, uplifts, and ignites a desire for something greater.  This majestic calm can live in the soul even the the midst of racing thoughts and oppressing anxieties. Such serenity is hidden from human industry and calculation though it can permeate bone and marrow, highest thoughts and deepest instincts. No technique or method discovers the secret fountain that floods human existence in this way. Yet, its call haunts us in our pride and provides the boundary for our despair.  The humble cry of faith invites its mystery.

When approached in humility and faith, this merciful silence is ready to run and embrace us while we are still far away.  Unearned, unmerited, unexpected, for the price of our tears, this quiet stillness pays us in full, no matter how little we have labored. This silent plethora binds our wounds and restores our dignity, no matter how beat up we are on the path of life. A mere mustard seed of this tender lull fulfills every desire and surpasses all our hopes. In the form of a pure gift, the wisest have sacrificed all they have to acquire this buried treasure, while only the most childlike fully possess this precious pearl. Each human heart and the whole human adventure were born out of the hope that this silence holds for us.

We bear the image and likeness of this great mystery, and we live to make known its glory.  Never imposing itself, the secret of this immense solitude provides the space for self gift and self possession, of relation and communion, of action and contemplation. A hidden and humble quietude, if we deny it, it will deny us. It never abandons us, however, no matter how often we abandon it, because this eternal silence is faithful to itself. This mysterious speechlessness beckons between the beats of one’s own heart, in the space between the inhale and exhale of a single breath, at the end of one thought and before the beginning of the next.

That we might know this ever-flowing Spring, the Truth who has always proceeded from the silent stillness of the Father’s heart was conceived when this same Stillness overshadowed the woman’s womb. Born in poverty and nurtured in exile, the Father’s Son established the still point around which all of human history and each human heart revolve. Living among us, with every heartbeat, every breath, every thought, every word, every work until, climaxed in wordless cry and final breath, the silenced Word fully disclosed the great secret that the Father yearned to entrust to us in crucified glory.

When the Word humbled Himself in rejection, betrayal, humiliation, denial, injustice, and death, all this evil was at once implicated in the Father’s silent love. Because the secret of the Father is more powerful than the rancor of sin and death, He raised His Crucified Word. In raising Mary’s Son, He gave Christ’s obedient love the power to raise all of creation, making all things new.

Having implicated Himself in our plight, the crucified Word can give us life even as we die in dissonant restlessness. Each of us can claim this Truth and cling to it even as our last life breath leaves us.  In all the noise and confusion that threaten to reduce us to mere cogs in the wheel of human industry, our union in faith to the Word of the Father makes us vulnerable to that tender silence that heaven knows.

Beyond the power of death, the hidden eloquence of God’s immense love defines human existence.  So full, so rich, so beautiful — all words fail, speechless adoration overcomes the soul – the same speechlessness that the Divine Persons share imprints itself in us. New meaning floods over our existences even now, in this difficult hour and in this grace filled moment. A saving silence rises above the silence of death and cacophony of sin.

To know this truth is to know at once the Father’s great mercy for us and who we are in His sight. He does not use His power to force our behavior. He patiently accepts our hostility and rejection – even permitting what is most precious to Him to suffer death for our sakes.  His love is deeper and more powerful than our hatred and His patience is able to bear with our infirmities – to heal and raise up what is good, beautiful and true about who we are in His sight.

In a world that does not have the strength to restrain itself, we behold on the Cross the gentleness of the Father who tenderly restrains His power to heal us. Our heartache and anxiety, our guilt and our fears are all remedied before this mystery – if only we will humbly surrender and let what the Father has revealed enter into our hearts. If we will silence ourselves and remain with Him, the love of the Father flows through the Cross into the deepest wounds to heal, to restore and to set free.  On this day, our misery is immersed in His Mercy so that we might be saved.

Through Christ’s great prayer for us we know that the Father longs for us to dwell with Him. If we approach the foot of the Cross with reverence, the deep things of God and His divine dream for each one of us is manifest and realized in faith.  If today we follow in the footsteps of the One who was Crucified by love and for love, we will find the courage and strength to life by love and for love. If we adore the Wood on which our Savior offered Himself for us, we will find that the kiss we offer the Lord is returned in the most profound and beautiful way.

This journey progresses by means of the Cross – this means believing in God’s love in all manner of hardships and trials, even when all human love seems to fail.  Only those who dare to make this journey, however, discover that love that no power or abyss of misery can overcome.  The love that awaits us ahead is stronger than death – and even if we die, death in the face of this love is not the last word.  For in this love and by this love we live.

This Love is a gift. He comes to us in the form of “the Word” spoken by the Father into our flesh. He comes full of confidence into our difficult life history – that common story in which each of us shares, and those particular sorrows that no one else can share with us, but Him.  In the midst of this life’s storm, the silent majesty of this Divine Word is filled with a longing for our humanity that is deeper and more ancient than our resistance to Him. The soul’s Deepest Center, He draws a response from places so deep in our being that we do not even know they exist. Even in the most bitter catastrophe, a hidden hope gestates because of the salvation that He has come to bring.

The One who aches for faithfulness is never indifferent to tears shed over married love.This Light walks into the darkness of failed or struggling marriages undaunted. He is confident even when we have completely lost our confidence. He walks on top of the waves of despair and reaches to pull us above the flood if we will turn our eyes to Him and cry for help.  In the face of an angry and hostile world, in our weaknesses and voids, He indissolubly fashions marriage and sanctifies it by His blood — changing our limited efforts to give ourselves in service to one another into a wellspring of grace.

The Word by which all things were made, including marriage itself, waits for couples to seek Him in the silence of Eucharistic Adoration. He is present to those husbands and wives who in their humiliation and feelings of abandonment trust in Him. Through a family’s icons He beholds the candlelight shining on the faces of both the betrayed and the betrayer, and He hears the faith that cries out to Him from pain. Before the barren wall that bears His Cross, He weeps with those who weep. His silent fullness fills every emptiness. His last wordless cry establishes meaning even when a marriage’s crushing circumstances seem to render everything meaningless.

The conqueror of death, the Risen One has opened the gates even to the hell that we make of our lives and families. Where no other connection seems left, He is all the connection that we really need. For couples who need integrity restored, He is ready to become their integrity.  For couples whose purity is compromised, He is ready to purify anew.  He liberates from cycles of shame and disgrace. He establishes trust and peace. For couples that need a new beginning, He is the Word that is from the Beginning.

When we struggle against running away from heartache and are loathed to face the truth, the One who is True finds His rest in bearing even the most bitter struggles with us in love. He provides courage for those difficult conversations. He makes it possible to humble oneself, to forgive, to be forgiven. The Man of Sorrows is ever ready to teach how to intercede for the one who has betrayed, denied and abandoned his friend. He is ready to baptize a couple in His compassion when they have deeply saddened one another.

The humble presence of the Truth Himself causes pride to fall, and raises up from bitter humiliation. Because He is righteous and true, this Mighty Warrior does not fail to fight for faithfulness. Because He has overcome, not even addictions or depression or long painful illnesses can prevent His love from prevailing. Even when one’s own life’s companion will not hear His voice, He is enough to fill even the most difficult life with joy.  Against every obstinacy, He evokes conversion of heart and puts the whole of one’s life into dialogue with the love of the Father.

The radiance of the Bridegroom purifies and transforms all our loves the more we make space for Him in our lives. The more a couple will allow Him to captivate their hearts, the easier it is to surrender everything to Him.  He treasures those fleeting moments of unexpected victory when husband and wife stand together in faith. He is amazed and gives thanks to the Father when together with Him they lift up their hearts in thanksgiving — because of all of these mysterious blessings that they do not understand and struggle to receive.

The Eternal Word who transcends all time and space, and who as Alpha and Omega constantly fills every height and depth with eternal meaning, humbly embraces the limitations of our flesh in time and space, and desires to be plunged into the ambiguities of our existence.  He has entered into a world of relationships that He does not surmount but makes perfect by accepting and submitting Himself, leaving space for imperfect recognition and misunderstanding, but only to protect human dignity and freedom.  Into these earthly waters He obediently descends through the ministry of a reluctant prophet, not to be changed by them, but to purify and order them to heavenly things.

When He raises up from those waters that He sanctified, the Spirit of heaven descends, not in a display of overwhelming and sensational power, but with the surprising gentleness of a dove. The Love of Heaven is descending on earth through every baptism ever after, not only onto the fortunate soul that has said yes to this unfathomable grace, but through that soul onto the whole world.  All the such a soul needs to do for this to happen is to follow in the obedient footsteps of his crucified Master.  Every baptism is this beginning of creation, the birth of a new heaven and new earth in which the dignity and freedom of human existence is re-established in the God who is Love.

The voice of the Almighty echoes over this magnificence with exquisite tenderness. Not the voice of an angry deity impatient with a fallen world and not threatening to violently crush treacherous mankind in a display of hostility. It is not a voice of overbearing cultural and political power that is eager to put humanity under foot.  Instead, in a moment that is pregnant with hushed adoration, the Father voice rejoices in this revelation of His Son: the Word who sews obedience into the difficult uncertainties of life to make them holy, the only Begotten into whose eternal sonship we are plunged when we enter these same waters with faith, the promised One whose appearance surpasses the hopes and dreams of every prophet who has ever dared foretell and prepare for His coming. Up from these waters into which Divinity plunges itself, Humanity is implicated in the joy of the Father.