This essay was written as an afterword for, and will appear in a future printing of, Robert Cardinal Sarah’s The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise, published last month by Ignatius Press.
Ever since I first read the Letters of Saint Ignatius of Antioch in the 1950s, one passage from his Letter to the Ephesians has particularly affected me:
“It is better to keep silence and be [a Christian] than to talk and not to be. Teaching is an excellent thing, provided the speaker practices what he teaches. Now, there is one Teacher who spoke and it came to pass. And even what He did silently is worthy of the Father. He who has truly made the words of Jesus his own is able also to hear His silence, so that he may be perfect: so that he may act through his speech and be known through his silence” (15, 1f).
What does that mean: to hear Jesus’s silence and to know him through his silence? We know from the Gospels that Jesus frequently spent nights alone “on the mountain” in prayer, in conversation with his Father. We know that his speech, his word, comes from silence and could mature only there.
So it stands to reason that his word can be correctly understood only if we, too, enter into his silence, if we learn to hear it from his silence.
Certainly, in order to interpret Jesus’s words, historical knowledge is necessary, which teaches us to understand the time and the language at that time. But that alone is not enough if we are really to comprehend the Lord’s message in depth.
Anyone today who reads the ever-thicker commentaries on the Gospels remains disappointed in the end. He learns a lot that is useful about those days and a lot of hypotheses that ultimately contribute nothing at all to an understanding of the text.
In the end you feel that
in all the excess of words, something essential is lacking: entrance into Jesus’s silence, from which his word is born. If we cannot enter into this silence, we will always hear the word only on its surface and thus not really understand it.
As I was reading the new book by Robert Cardinal Sarah, all these thoughts went through my soul again. Sarah teaches us silence — being silent with Jesus, true inner stillness, and in just this way he helps us to grasp the word of the Lord anew.
Of course he speaks hardly at all about himself, but now and then he does give us a glimpse into his interior life. In answer to Nicolas Diat’s question, “At times in your life have you thought that words were becoming too cumbersome, too heavy, too noisy?,” he answers:
“In my prayer and in my interior life, I have always felt the need for a deeper, more complete silence. … The days of solitude, silence, and absolute fasting have been a great support. They have been an unprecedented grace, a slow purification, and a personal encounter with … God. … Days of solitude, silence, and fasting, nourished by the Word of God alone, allow man to base his life on what is essential.”
These lines make visible the source from which the cardinal lives, which gives his word its inner depth.
From this vantage point, he can then see the dangers that continually threaten the spiritual life, of priests and bishops also, and thus endanger the Church herself, too, in which it is not uncommon for the Word to be replaced by a verbosity that dilutes the greatness of the Word.
I would like to quote just one sentence that can become an examination of conscience for every bishop:
“It can happen that a good, pious priest, once he is raised to the episcopal dignity, quickly falls into mediocrity and a concern for worldly success. Overwhelmed by the weight of the duties that are incumbent on him, worried about his power, his authority, and the material needs of his office, he gradually runs out of steam.”
Cardinal Sarah is a spiritual teacher, who speaks out of the depths of silence with the Lord, out of his interior union with him, and thus really has something to say to each one of us.
We should be grateful to Pope Francis for appointing such a spiritual teacher as head of the congregation that is responsible for the celebration of the liturgy in the Church.
With the liturgy, too, as with the interpretation of Sacred Scripture, it is true that specialized knowledge is necessary. But it is also true of the liturgy that specialization ultimately can talk right past the essential thing unless it is grounded in a deep, interior union with the praying Church, which over and over again learns anew from the Lord himself what adoration is.
With Cardinal Sarah, a master of silence and of interior prayer, the liturgy is in good hands.
I hope there will be increasingly more occasions for Benedict XVI to express himself in public during his retirement. This Afterword for Cardinal Sarah's book in a way strikes out at the 'verbosity that dilutes the greatness of the Word', yet 'in the excess of words, something essential is lacking' - the burden we have all had to carry for the past four years and almost two months, and counting...
Riccardo Cascioli sees great pragmatic significance in Benedict XVI's decision to write the Afterword to Cardinal Sarah's book...
Benedict XVI steps up check the liturgical drift
and to express support for Cardinal Sarah
who has been marginalized at CDW
by Riccardo Cascioli
Translated from
May 18, 2017
“With Cardinal Sarah, the liturgy is in good hands”. Signed, Benedict XVI.
That which at first glance may seem to be nothing more than an act of esteem is really a true and proper bombshell. It means that the emeritus Pope – in his discreet manner – has entered the arena in defense of Cardinal Robert Sarah who, as Prefect of the Conrgegation for Divine Worship, has been isolated and marginalized by the members (bishops, priests and laymen) Pope Francis has assigned to the CDW in a near-complete overhaul, and who has been publicly opposed by the pope in his statement recommending that priests should celebrate Mass
ad orientem, even in the ordinary form.
Benedict XVI’s gesture comes in the form of an Afterword for Cardinal Sarah’s second book-length interview,
La force du silence(The power of silence) originally published in French and now in an English edition, but still to be translated to Italian. The Afterword was published yesterday in FIRST THINGS.
In it, the emeritus Pope has great praise for the book and for the Cardinal himself, “a spiritual teacher, who speaks out of the depths of silence with the Lord, out of his interior union with him, and thus really has something to say to each one of us.”
At the end, Benedict XVI says “We should be grateful to Pope Francis for appointing such a spiritual teacher as head of the congregation that is responsible for the celebration of the liturgy in the Church.” It is a remark that sounds more like protective armor rather than gratitude.
It is well-known that in the past year, Cardinal Sarah was gradually divested of authority in the CDW, first by the pope’s appointment of members to replace the old composition of the CDW , in effect surrounding Sarah with progressivist figures who are openly hostile to the reform of the liturgical reform advocated and begun by Benedict XVI, and which the Guinean cardinal was trying to pursue.
Then there was the open rejection by the current pope of Cardinal Sarah’s recommendation for priests to resume celebrating Mass
ad orientem. Then, without the cardinal’s knowledge, the pope named a commission to study the current translations of liturgical texts. And finally, reported moves by the pope to look into the possibility of an ‘ecumenical Mass’, again bypassing Sarah and the CDW.
This is a decided liturgical drift that strikes at the heart of Benedict XVI’s Pontificate which has placed the liturgy at the center of Church life. In the Afterword, the emeritus Pope reiterates this warning:
With the liturgy, too, as with the interpretation of Sacred Scripture, it is true that specialized knowledge is necessary. But it is also true of the liturgy that specialization ultimately can talk right past the essential thing unless it is grounded in a deep, interior union with the praying Church, which over and over again learns anew from the Lord himself what adoration is.
And his final statement: “With Cardinal Sarah, a master of silence and of interior prayer, the liturgy is in good hands.”
This intervention by Benedict XVI, which seeks to cast a protective armor on Cardinal Sarah and emphasize that he is the head of the Vatican’s liturgical office, is unprecedented. Even if it takes the form of an apparently innocuous comment on a book, the ecclesiastical significance of the gesture cannot be missed, indicating Benedict XVI’s concern for what is happening in the heart of the Church.
He has intervened on the one thing which perhaps most characterized his pontificate, the idea that “The crisis of the Church is a crisis of liturgy”, as he used to say, an idea that has been re-launched by Cardinal Sarah.
But we must not forget what Mons. Georg Gaenswein said in a recent interview, in a manner that sounded innocent. Responding to a question about the confusion in the Church today and to the dvisions it has created, he said that Benedict XVI is following closely everything that happens in the Church. This is one way in which he is showing his hand.
May he do so more, and especially, with respect to the infinitely problematic Amoris laetitia ! - about which so far, his only 'reaction', according to Georg Gaenswein, is a most uncharacteristic, implausible nonchalance - "He feels very remote from all of that", or words to that effect.
It’s no surprise Benedict XVI
is praising Cardinal Sarah –
the two enjoy a rare spiritual kinship
The Cardinal and the Pope Emeritus understand that priests and bishops
have a special requirement to constantly renew their life of prayer
by Francis Phillips
18 May 2017
In a rare act of endorsement, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has written the Afterword to a new book by Cardinal Sarah of Guinea entitled
The Power of Silence. Cardinal Sarah is the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.
Recently, he made an appeal for Communion to be received on the tongue when kneeling and for priests to celebrate Mass
ad orientem, so it is not surprising that Pope Benedict, under whose pontificate the relationship between the Ordinary and the Extraordinary Forms of the Mass was refined, should feel a spiritual kinship with him.
But this is not the primary link between these two men of God. What unites them is something prior to reverent celebration of the liturgy; it is simply man’s relationship to God in prayer.
We tend to think of prayer as requiring words; after all, we are creatures who use language and there are innumerable beautiful prayers in Scripture and the liturgy. But primarily, prayer is silent adoration; not the mere absence of sound or words but that essential quiet needed to hear the still small voice of God in our hearts and respond to it.
What Cardinal Sarah and the former Holy Father share is the conviction – especially necessary today when it is easy to become addicted to the media in all its changing forms – that the Church and the spiritual lives of its members cannot flourish unless we return to the example of Christ himself who, as Pope Benedict reminds the reader in his Afterword, “frequently spent nights alone ‘on the mountain’ in prayer, in conversation with his Father. We know that his speech, his word, comes from silence and could only mature there.”
The Power of Silence is not a promising title in a world full of noise. My own copy, published before Pope Benedict added his own thoughts in his Afterword, has it written by the author, Cardinal Sarah himself. In it, he reminds us that “all the saints have ardently loved silence”.
Indeed, he goes further, warning that
“a multitude of sins are due to chattering or listening complacently to the chatter of others” and adding a profoundly disquieting rhetorical question: “How many souls will be lost on the day of the Last Judgment because they did not keep watch over their tongue?” God help us – what a wake-up call that is.
Having reviewed Cardinal Sarah’s earlier book,
God or Nothing, which I unreservedly recommend to every Catholic to read, I am reminded that for the Cardinal,
“Man is only great when he is on his knees before God”.
Also, that when he was made Archbishop of Conakry, he made the decision to make a spiritual retreat every two months in an isolated place, fasting entirely from food and drink for three days and taking with him only a Bible, a travelling Mass kit and a book of spiritual reading.
One can see why Pope Benedict, whose life now is organised around silence and prayer, should feel inspired to write his Afterword to The Power of Silence. As a theologian he knows that “mere” scholarship is not enough; you have to enter into “Jesus’S silence, from which his word is born.” At present our parish is studying his book,
Jesus of Nazareth; it is obvious that his writing flows from his own deep relationship with his subject.
What the Cardinal and the Pope Emeritus also understand is that priests and bishops have a special requirement to constantly renew their life of prayer.
Otherwise, as Pope Benedict points out, when appointed bishop a man can quickly fall “into mediocrity and a concern for worldly success…. Worried about his power, his authority and the material needs of his office, he gradually runs of out steam.”
He concludes his Afterword with the comment that the liturgy needs to be “grounded in a deep, interior union with the praying Church, which…learns anew from the Lord himself what adoration is.”
We are reminded that before prayer becomes contrition, thanksgiving or supplication it is adoration. This adoration is the opposite of what the world has to offer.
Cardinal Sarah, “a master of silence and of interior prayer” as the Pope Emeritus describes him, is a true pastor of souls; his new book, with this endorsement by a man who has clearly been a spiritual mentor to him, should also be essential reading.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/05/2017 16:32]