Silence is a necessary part of the spiritual life.  Hopefully we pray every day; however, if none of that time in prayer is spent in the midst of silence, then that prayer will not bear the full amount of fruit that it has the potential to.  It is within silence that we are able to hear God speaking to us and it gives us the opportunity to fully invest our heart, soul, and mind into our communication with God.  At the end of the day thats what prayer is: communicating with God.

When you’re in conversation with a friend its important to stop talking so that they can invest in the conversation.  We’re bad friends if we don’t give them the opportunity to talk.  God is more than a friend, he’s our heavenly father.  As a teenager I almost never gave my parents an opportunity to speak and I played other immature games with my parents so that I would never hear their opinion, rules, and I made many attempts to go as long as possible to not speak to them at all.  My philosophy was, its easier to ask forgiveness than permission.  This is not that road we want to take toward our heavenly father.  This isn’t even the road we should take for our biological parents!  

Silence is the time we give God to respond and it’s the time we give ourselves to formulate our response to God's.  Now, whenever I preach on or talk to others about silence, the first question I get is: what do I do during the silence?  NOTHING!  It wouldn’t be silence if you did something.  Praying a rosary, the divine mercy chaplet, novena, etc., isn’t silence because your brain is working on those prayers.  Silence is just that…silence.  No thinking, talking, music (from a device or in your head), or anything should be going on.  Just you sitting/kneeling/standing in your prayer space and listening only for God. 

Is this hard?  You bet it is.  But God doesn’t call us to do easy things.  God is always challenging us to grow; becoming stronger in the virtues of faith, hope, and love; to become more like Jesus; and to share that love with everyone regardless of the consequences.  Nothing about being a Christian is easy, let alone a Catholic.  Silence is no exception here.  Will distractions happen?  You bet they will.  There will two types of distractions: annoying and sinful.  Annoying distractions are generally lists: to do, grocery, packing, etc.  Sinful are self explanatory.  When an annoying distraction comes up, simply ask the Lord to remind you about that after your prayer time and re-focus on the silence.  When a sinful distraction comes up, simple say: “in Jesus’ name I cast out this sinful thought.”  

I’ll say it again, silence is a necessary part of the spiritual life.  It takes time and disciple to practice; but, once we have it down we will see its beauty.  Especially in our current culture where we are always looking at screens, listening to music or videos, and posting pictures.  Silence is needed now more than ever in our lives.  Start practicing this today.  It will be hard but you can do it.  And please, keep me in your prayers as you are in mine.