Silence and recollection

WE need silence and recollection. Urgently. Especially these days. Our mind needs it. Our heart longs for it.

Thus, when occasionally we find ourselves in some quiet place, perhaps disturbed only by the rustle of leaves, chirping of birds, murmur of flowing water, we feel we are in Paradise, a kind of heaven here on earth.

All of a sudden, we feel relaxed and our thoughts become long, slow and delightful. The memory creates wonderful images and sensations. A feeling of a transformation takes place, a shift of place and time, letting us to enter more deeply into the world both inside and outside us.

People may dismiss all this as just a play of our senses, a result of our body’s yearning for rest and comfort. I am no expert in this area. But what I can say is that there’s some urge in us to go out of our senses. And even of our reasoning.

A mysterious part of us is attracted to something beyond our senses and reason. Of course, our usual problem is that we often get entangled and are attached to them. They offer irresistible delights and can hold us captive and addicted. Still, there is something that drives us to go beyond them.

This is not easy to describe. But I was happy to discover a point in the Catechism of the Catholic Church describing the heart in relation to prayer. The description resembles this urge of ours to go out of our senses and reason.

“The heart is the dwelling-place where I am, where I live,” it says. “The heart is the place ‘to which I withdraw.’ The heart is our hidden center, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others.

“Only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully. The
heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as image of God we live in relation.” (2563)

So it seems that there is an urge to go beyond our senses and reason, on the one hand, and a force that attracts us to it, on the other hand, again beyond our reason and psychic drives. And the basis of all this is our being an image of God, children of God who necessarily live in relation with
God.

In another point of the Catechism, a relevant teaching is made: “The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God. And God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for.” (27)

But this encounter with God in our heart, a result of our desire and of God drawing us to himself, requires certain conditions. One is grace. But in the human level, what is needed is precisely silence and recollection.

It is the effort to put our senses and reason in their right setting, orienting them toward a spiritual and supernatural reality. What usually happens is that our senses and reason, our usual means to know things, can be so aroused as to prevent our heart from doing what is proper to it.

These senses and reason can be a barrier, a prison that does not allow our heart and soul to fly to God and to listen to his voice. We need to discipline them to allow our heart to have an encounter with God.

The heart in that condition lets God to speak to us and we to listen to him, and vice-versa, we to speak to him and he to listen to us. This is when true prayer takes place.

A ninth-century monk describes true prayer as “the work of the heart, not of the lips, because God does not look at the words, but at the heart of him who prays.”

Let’s take care of our heart. Let it find silence and recollection, especially in the frenzy of our life these days. Let it find its true repose.