We inhabit a rather cacophonous world. An aspect of our era is that noise is knitted into the fabric of our daily existence. The race for technological advancement and the drive for material progress seem to hold us enthralled if not addicted that we are unable to let go of the clamour or commotion of life. Sit in an office and listen to the humming of all the devices and you understand why silence is next to impossible. Our “attachment” runs counter to the thread that weaves through the 1st Reading and the Gospel: Where is God to be found? Certainly, the experience of the Prophet Elijah highlights the challenge of a noisy world that is incapable of keeping still long enough to recognise God’s gentle presence. In the storm, Peter began to sink when he was distracted by the gust and gale swirling around him instead of focussing on Christ coming to him.
Surrounded by the din of modernity, noise makes it difficult perceive God’s presence. When seized by the screaming squall of a storm, we will experience Him as absent from our lives and this pandemic seems to have confirmed. Apart from devastating us economically, Covid-19 has laid bare a landscape that is bereft of God. Why does it feel that God is nowhere to be found? We may protest that we genuinely believe in His presence, but in reality, we live as if He were absent.
Firstly, in terms of absence, our relationship with God, by and large, it is one that is marked by utility or usefulness. How smugly presumptuous we were based on the few enquiries about when Holy Mass would resume. We foolishly thought that people would come flocking back to Church, braving the Byzantine layers of procedures designed to prevent a congregation gathering from generating Covid clusters. But consider what Aristotle once remarked, “A swallow does not a summer make”.
So far, the registration for Holy Mass attendance has not been overwhelming and even amongst those who have signed up, some do not show up at all. We may have overestimated the number of people desiring to attend Holy Mass. What makes it worse is that those who are raring to join are those, on account of their vulnerability, discouraged from coming. Unbeknownst, we may have further nudged our faithful into a world of individual preferences that is devoid of personal sacrifices—one is always a click away from a better life-streamed homily elsewhere than the boring, insipid and uninspiring homilies of a neighbouring Archdiocese north of here. What was once a substitute, that is, Spiritual Communion has now become the standard. In terms of our friendship with God, we continue to slide down the slope of spiritual convenience which is nothing more than a relationship empty of sacrifice.
Secondly, this shallow communion shows too in our Sunday collection. I am not soliciting but merely pointing out a sobering fact that nobody had thought that this “isolation” would last this long. Initially, donations came pouring in but now, as reality bites, families will soon draw from whatever savings they may have. Economic considerations are at the top of everyone’s priority and that is understandable. Yet, the Sunday collection embodies the 5th precept of the Church which is an obligation to assist in the material needs of the Church, subject to each one’s ability. Tithing as a precept is based on sacrifice, which in turn simply signifies the worship due to God, our Creator. In our devotion, we worship God out of love and never out of fear. As an author said, “Love without sacrifice is like theft”. We give nothing to Him but expects everything of Him.
Thirdly, if you recall the early weeks of the lockdown—even though we were isolated socially, almost overnight, our link to the outside world heightened thanks to our free data increase. Of course, the noise that flows through life merely finds its current in the river of online shopping and food delivery. If not buying or eating, we have been inundated with home entertainment—that “bingeing” which is surely a sin of gluttony has become an acceptable behaviour in light of the lack of movement. Instead of finding God in solitude, we sought refuge and comfort in clatter of our entertainment. In fact, many have retreated behind a wall of noise.
Our reaction to the pandemic, led by science and supported by pleasure, reveals a world hostile to the presence of God. Is it any wonder why we struggle to comprehend if God is ever present to us?
Cardinal Sarah gave an interview which might also help us to tone down our cacophony. In grappling with what he termed as the “Dictatorship of Noise”, he used the example of Christ our Lord to encourage us to enter into silence so that we may be able to hear God. “Christ lived for thirty years in silence. Then, during his public life, He withdrew to the desert to listen to and speak with His Father. The world vitally needs those who go off into the desert. Because God speaks in silence”.
We cannot find God without silence. The Word, our Lord Jesus, came from the silence of the Father. Whilst at His birth we are accustomed to the tumultuous voices of the angels coming from above but in reality, both the sacred and silence are intertwined. Sacred silence sharpens our sense of hearing because silence is the perfect art of listening for one who prepares to welcome God as Mary did. She silently pondered these things in her heart.
We do not know how far into the future the tunnel of this pandemic runs. An optimistic forecast predicts a return to normalcy sometime next year. A more alarming picture projects a recovery of the pre-Covid condition in about three or four years. Whether we bite the miraculous bullet sooner or later, what is evident is how much uproar surrounds this contagion. Fear is the noise of any pandemic. Depressing diagnosis or sombre prognosis notwithstanding, our fear has intensified and so too our disquiet. If Holy Saturday is a reminder that God’s silence is not His absence, then, while this pandemic may have envisioned a perfect storm for a dystopian future, it has also set a perfect calm for the silence of listening as it did for Elijah in the breeze and for Peter to hear Jesus call out to him: “Courage, it is I”. Only in silence, can God speak the loudest.
