To believe is “to walk in the presence of God.” (Genesis 17:1) At the same time faith is an act and an attitude which grabs, twists and penetrates all that is in the human person: your trust, loyalty, intellectual assent, emotional conviction. It commits the entire history of a person: his criteria, attitude, general conduct and vital inspiration.
What really is disconcerting to wayfarers who seek God day after day is His silence. “From the beginning of the world God is the one that is always silent”, says Unamuno.
The life of faith and life with God is an exodus, a departure, always going after the Lord, looking for him. This is the beginning of the eternal odyssey of those who are seeking God: a weighty monotonous story capable of quashing any resistance: in each instant, in every prayerful moment, when finally, the “face” of God was in reach, He “was gone.” The Lord wraps Himself in the mantel of silence and is hidden leaving us disconcerted.
Suddenly we are surrounded by enigmas and tragedies. This little precious creature is only three years old and acute meningitis has made her a life-long invalid. How is that possible? That whole family perished in an accident, on a Sunday afternoon, coming home from the beach. Where was God? And those beautiful mansions on the east side next to those ugly miserable shacks…What is God doing about it? He the Father of all? Isn’t He all-powerful? Why is He silent?
Confusion? Of course, on account of an obstinate and unbearable silence that is slowly undermining the strongest resistance. Soon you can hear voices and you don’t know from where they come. Maybe from our unconscious, or from nowhere, and they ask: “Where is your God? (Psalm 41)
The believer is completely besieged by this puzzling silence of God, and little by little, he becomes overwhelmed by a vague sense of insecurity. Is all this true or is it just in his mind, or on the contrary, is a reality, as real as real can be? And you keep sailing over troubled waters, “bewildered by the silence of God”. (Psalm 29)
Only a deep spirit of abandonment, of trust in God, along with an adult faith can free us from being confused or broken by God’s silence. Only this mature faith can see what is essential or even what is invisible. This faith “knows” what lies hidden beyond the silence of God’s breath as it perceives the dawn behind the mountains. What is essential is always hidden to the human eye, be it the eye retina or even inner sensibility. What is really essential, is the ultimate reality, which is accessible only by faith, pure and simple, by a sincere or fully developed adult faith, the one who relies only in God and has the patience of a wheat field waiting to be born under the sun.
Raise up your eyes and look yonder where the source of hope is: Jesus Christ Risen.
Based on Fr. Ignacio Larrañaga’s book The silence of Mary.
