QUIET

Some people talk too much.

Some people don’t talk enough.

Some people don’t know how to speak up.

Some people don’t know how to shut up.

Some people don’t know how to be still.

Some people don’t listen.

Some people talk so they don’t have to listen.

Some people don’t talk – but they don’t listen. They are talking to themselves about what they did yesterday or what they are going to do tomorrow.

Become still!


Breathe!

Be! Just be! Just be there!

Relax! Most times you don’t have to say anything.

Andre Kostelanetz, the great conductor of New York Philharmonic fame, once said, “One of the greatest sounds of them all – and to me it is sound – is utter, complete silence.”

Our Masses need more stillness – more silence.

Way back in 1955, Romano Guardini in his book, Meditations Before Mass, stressed the need for “stillness …. attentiveness …. composure …. tranquility ….”

Do I know how to quiet down and become still?

We need to come to Mass to collect our scattered and shattered selves. This is what “recollection” means.

Coughing and other noise in church must have bothered Guardini, because he writes:

“What does stillness really imply? It implies above all that speech end and silence prevail, that no other sounds – of movements, of turning pages, of coughing and throat-clearing – be audible. There is no need to exaggerate. Men live, and living things move; a forced outward conformity is no better than restlessness. Nevertheless, stillness is still, and it comes only if seriously desired. If we value it, it brings us joy; if not, discomfort. People are often heard to say: ‘But I can’t help coughing’ or ‘I can’t kneel quietly’; yet once stirred by a concert or lecture they forget all about coughing and fidgeting. That stillness proper to the most beautiful things in existence dominates, a quiet area of attentiveness in which the beautiful and truly important reign.”

Worship takes place not only in great cathedrals and churches, but also in one’s “inner room.”

Romano Guardini continues a few pages later, “This requires the spaciousness, freedom, and pure receptiveness of that inner ‘clean-swept room’ which silence alone can create. The constant talker knows no such room within himself; hence he cannot know truth.”

Teachers of prayer and meditation like to start off by telling folks, “Breathe! Catch your breath. Calm down. Feel your body in the seat you’re sitting in. Make yourself comfortable. Become centered.”

Often there is too much inner noise and clutter and shuffling around and coughing in our soul.

Often there is too much outer noise, too much business, and at times too many “out-loud” prayers being said before, during and after Mass.

Some people love to say the Rosary out loud before or after Mass. Some folks love quiet before and after Mass.

We need to become still.

As Psalm 46:10 is often translated, “Be still and know that I am God.”

Many liturgies have too much “business” going on.

Sometimes I wish Jesus would come to the temple, throw out the money changers and say, “This is my Father’s house. Why are you making it a den of thieves?”

V.V. Rozanov, wrote, “All religions will pass, but this will remain: simply sitting in a chair and looking in the distance.”

Shelley Winters, the actress, once said, “Every now and then, when you’re on stage, you hear the best sound a player can hear. It’s a sound you can’t get in movies or television. It is the sound of a wonderful deep silence that means you’ve hit them where they live.”

© Andrew Costello, 

The Book To Leave In 

The Bathroom When Your Kids 

Don't Go To Church, 2008, Chapter 19