Silence

Lent can sometimes be just too busy. One of our perennial temptations in Lent is to take on a bit more and then a little bit more. We can easily fill these forty days with more meetings, more services, more activities and more stuff. And yet, in spite of our busyness, the irony is that part of the discipline of Lent is to cultivate a greater simplicity of life so that we can be attentive to the mystery of God. 

So, here’s a thought: one of the things that may help us to embrace a holy and fruitful Lent is simply to do nothing, to be still, to be silent and to wait on God:

Silence is a mystery of the age to come,

but words are instruments of this world….

Know that every loquacious man is inwardly empty,

though he discourse on amazing things….

If you love the truth, love silence.

This will make you illumined in God…

and will deliver you from the illusions of ignorance.

Silence unites you to God himself.

- Isaac of Nineveh, 7th century