Reflection for the Second Sunday after Christmas…
Second Sunday after Christmas
Readings Ecclesiasticus 24:1-2.8-12
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“When peaceful silence lay over all…”
The words of the Entrance Rite of today’s Mass speak a powerful but often unknown truth. Silence is peaceful in that it has no sound! Maybe not everyones’s idea of peace perhaps. Some may even feel threatened by silence.
Remember “Star Wars” and the sound of the rockets blasting off or the sound as they journeyed through their Galaxy? Or Star Trek with Captain James Kirk issuing commands from the flight deck as they sent rockets hissing their way through space? But silence has no sound… there is nothing to be heard between the stars and the planets! The film makers get it wrong every time. The only place where true silence can be found is in space. Within your Sunday space today give silence a chance, just let it be. It can be a healthy and a holy experience.
The late Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk and writer, the anniversary of whose death was last December 10, was talking to a Buddhist monk shortly before his sudden unexpected death and they were comparing notes on the training of novices in prayer. Merton said that the first year was the Spiritual year, the second year the Novitiate and during that year the novices are introduced to prayer.The Buddist said they had no set time frame for the introduction of their novices to their life of prayer, it was an individual programme and only began – irrespective of time- when the novice had learned to close a door quietly.
May I suggest a New Year Resolution? Gift yourself today and every day with a period of silence. Enter into The Sabbath experience by honouring silence within you, listen to the very breath of God within you with every breath you take. Listen to God… Listen to yourself and just let the silence be! Maybe begin by closing a door gently?
– Fr A J Butler sma
SMA House
Blackrock Road, Cork
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