Yesterday we had a day of retreat that helped me sink into silence. I love the Chapter call to "create silence" or, as we have been saying, "to embrace silence". I am convinced that God speaks to us in many ways but His first language is silence. Let us listen to Him today and spend this Lent in a deeper way just by embracing silence!
Matthew's Gospel, read this first Sunday of Lent, has Jesus being led into the desert to be tempted by the devil. Apparently, the devil only approached Jesus after he had been fasting for forty days and forty nights and was hungry. That is what the devil does: he waits until he finds a weak moment to attack us. But Jesus does not listen to the devil and quotes scripture after each temptation for the word of God is powerful. I like to think that the Spirit led Jesus into that silent, long retreat to reveal something of his mission; Jesus had heard the Father say that he was the Beloved Son and the Spirit had descended upon him at the baptism in the Jordan but Jesus needed time to process what God was asking of him. He was fully human and needed to listen to God. We have these forty days of Lent to do the same.
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