Three Days of Silence

By: Ivonne J. Hernandez

A few months ago, I was having a conversation with a priest who had just returned from a 30-day silent retreat. I asked him if it was easy to enter into the silence. He said that it took him about three days to let go of all the noise in his mind… three days. I then shared that I’ve always felt a desire to go on a silent retreat, but that I am afraid I would go crazy. He then said something I had not considered before. He said that he too would go crazy if he had no one to talk to for 30 days, but that is not what he was doing. He was talking with God. And right there, in a moment of silence, I felt my heart respond. An almost imperceptible movement of desire, stirring below my thoughts. 

“What is happening? Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps; the earth was in terror and was still, because God slept in the flesh and raised up those who were sleeping from the ages. God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled.” (The Lord’s descent into hell)

- A reading from an ancient homily for Holy Saturday

For Christians, the goal of silence is not emptiness; it is Presence.
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Perhaps nowhere can we see this with greater clarity than in the tomb of the Tabernacle.

“It means that Jesus is without beauty, without movement, without defense, wrapped in the Sacred Species as in a shroud, and laid in the tabernacle as in a tomb; that He is there, seeing everything, hearing everything, enduring everything as if He were dead. His love has also veiled His power, His glory, His feet, His hands, His sacred mouth, and has left Him only His Heart to love us, and His state of Victim to intercede for us.”

-St. Peter Julian Eymard, Notes from the Great Retreat in Rome

Things are not what they seem. Our natural eyes can’t see; our natural ears can’t hear.
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When we cry to God from the depths of our grief and suffering and He seems silent, let us not give up hope. 

“God is eternal blessedness, undying life, unfading light. God is love: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God freely wills to communicate the glory of his blessed life.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 257)

Yes, the King slept in the flesh… but only for three days. And in the silence, God was acting.
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Three days of darkness, three days of silence. “God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled.”

Ivonne J. Hernandez

Ivonne is a Catholic wife, mother, Lay Associate of the Blessed Sacrament, and President of Elisheba House. Speaker and writer, author of The Rosary: Eucharistic Meditations. Alongside her husband, Rick Hernandez, she coordinates the OCIA program at their home parish. A lover of choral music, Ivonne is a member of the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay. She and her husband live in Trinity, FL, with two of their young adult sons.