Silence and noisy mass actions

WE are now witnessing the spread of protest actions all over the world. The latest is the Occupy Wall Street that from New York has gone to many cities and communities in the US and has leapt beyond the boundary to go as far as Rome.

Social observers say it has been inspired by the Arab Spring phenomenon and other rallies and demonstrations in Europe like in Greece and Spain. Previous to these was the Tea Party movement in the States that also left a deep dent in the national political terrain.

We are not strangers to these mass actions. We had our share that culminated in the now world-famous People Power. But to be sure, their differences far outnumber their similarities, and so we have to be careful in assessing them. They are not all the same. They have different ethos that inspire them.

It’s clear that the world is entering a new phase in history as it grapples with new challenges that go beyond the simply ideological differences of yesteryears. The issues focus more on micro domestic concerns that were widely taken for granted before and now have grown to cancerous proportions.

Again, let’s hope that these developments will trigger the earnest search for the appropriate solutions. For this to happen of course, we need a new breed of leaders, if not a new culture that incorporates better the spiritual and supernatural dimensions of our life.

At the moment, what is more important to consider is that while these mass actions have their importance and relevance, we need to realize also that personal silence is necessary for any true development and improvement to take place not only in one’s personal life, but also in that of society.

Without this aspect in our lifestyle, we are prone to thoughtless and rash actions that can end up in riots and violence. We can cause more harm than good even if we have the best intentions.

Pope Benedict has something very interesting and intriguing to say about this. In a recent visit with Carthusian monks, he proposed that everyone needs to have silence and solitude in order to get in touch with reality.

He said that without silence and solitude, we risk in failing to experience God who is the author of reality. That is when we start to distort the meaning and purpose of our life here on earth. That is when, in his terms, virtuality can overtake reality.

To him, silence and solitude are not a way of isolating ourselves. Rather, it is the opposite. They are meant to foster our union with God, and through God, our link with all the others and with everything else in the world.

That is why he told the Carthusians that their way of life has something to share with the rest of humanity who now are in danger of what he termed as “anthropological mutation,” a drastic, erroneous change in the understanding of what man is.

This is a challenge that we have to face now—how to purify and enrich our culture so that this human need for silence and solitude become functional in our active life of work and other earthly concerns we have.

We have to be clear about one thing—that no amount of mass actions, even if they are successful in social, economic or political terms, can substitute our need for a living contact with God that we can have through silence and solitude.

Even the expressions of popular piety that, thanks to God, we still have in abundance in our country—for example, the vast devotion to the Sto. Nino, the Black Nazarene, and many other Marian devotions—cannot replace this need for silence and solitude.

Given our human condition that includes a realistic consideration of our weaknesses and sinfulness, we need silence and solitude to be able to discern the spiritual and supernatural realities that govern us and that are a key to knowing the objective reality.

We are prone to be overrun by our emotions and passions, and so our thinking and reasoning are often compromised. Our judgments and decisions are also affected by the effects of our sins, ours and those of the others that sometimes become so widespread that we can now talk about “structures of sin.”

Silence and solitude enable us to attain what St. Paul once proposed to us: “Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever modest, whatsoever just, whatsoever holy, whatsoever of good fame,… think on these things…and the God of peace shall be with you.” (Phil 4,8-9)