Dec 4: A Still, Small Voice Within: A Sound of Sheer Silence

Tagaste Monastery: Christ the Teacher

Saturday of the First Week of Advent
Reading I: Is 30:19-21, 23-26

“Your Teacher will not hide himself any more, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left, your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it (NRSV, Is 30:20b-21)."


Heavenly Father, rejecting your gift of life once so happily received, turning away from you while you remain ever present always offering to share yourself, brings confusion and chaos into the every day reality of the sinner. Death, the final moment of physical life, which should be a moment of culmination, of passage to a fuller life, as with Jesus an hour of glory, becomes instead for the sinner a matter of final undoing, a leap into the darkness of the pit, a leap even into apparent nothingness.

Yet, in the midst of all of the confusion brought on by our own sinfulness and the collective sinfulness of humankind, which is the sin of the world, there is a voice, a still, small voice within, a sound of sheer silence, that inevitably speaks to us, no matter what. It is your voice, Lord God, the voice of your Word, spoken once and for all in eternity and speaking to us at every moment, even from that first moment of human existence in our mother’s womb. In the one act that is your being, Lord, the same one act that generates your Word, you speak that same Word to the world and to everyone in it, creating, sharing divine life, and guiding us all to our final destiny. Once having accepted the Word into our lives in the womb, once having become human, that one Word remains ever present to us. We are human beings because of his presence. Even when we later turn away and refuse to live in your Spirit, we cannot escape the presence of your Word. That is why sin brings such confusion and chaos into our lives: the sinner exists in the presence of God whose Love is rejected.

Father, without you we can do nothing. Empower us, then, to listen to that still, small voice within, that sound of sheer silence. Help us to overcome the accumulated sinfulness of all of humanity and our own sinfulness that we might hear your Word speaking to us. Help us to grow gradually in an understanding of what it is that your Word speaks to us once and for all. In each moment, in your power, as we respond to you more and more, saying “yes” to your gift of divine life, we shall hear more and more of what it is that you say in your one Word.

We pray that the day will finally come when the Word, ever present to us, will no longer seem hidden in any way. Then the confusion and chaos brought about by sin will have melted away. We shall not only hear ever more clearly but we shall also recover our sight. We shall recognize more fully the Teacher who is your Son and the way that has always been clearly marked. With your grace filling us, we, who had been paralyzed by sin, shall, with heads held high, walk in the way with a sure and firm step.

Through Christ our Lord. Amen