The Power of Silence

by Robert Cardinal Sarah,

  247. From this joyous experience of mystery is born sacred song. The chant of the Christian liturgies ought to distance itself from certain verbose hymns so as to rediscover the contemplative grandeur of the chant of the monks of the East and the West.

  Gregorian chant is not contrary to silence. It has issued from it and leads to it. I would even say that it is as though woven of silence. At the Grande Chartreuse, what a moving experience it is to chant with the monks, in the half-light of the evening, the great Salve Regina at Vespers! The last notes die out one by one in a filial silence, enveloping our trust in the Virgin Mary. This experience is essential for understanding Joseph Ratzinger’s reflection in his book, A New Song for the Lord: “Silence. . . lets the unspeakable become song and also calls on the voices of the cosmos for help so that the unspoken may become audible. This means that church music, coming from the Word and the silence perceived in it, always presupposes a new listening to the whole richness of the Logos.”

  During the reign of Paul VI, in 1969, did the liturgical reform cause a loss of silence in the liturgy?

  248. As Cardinal Godfried Danneels remarked in a conference with a provocative title, “An Attitude of Service, not of Manipulation”, “the main fault of the Western liturgy, as it is celebrated, is that it is too wordy.” I think that it is necessary to pose the question at the root of the matter. It is not just about artificially adding a little more silence in the Church’s liturgies.

  Of course, the liturgy provides for times of silence that must be respected, before each prayer, before the Confíteor, after the reading of the Word of God, and after Communion. These times allow the soul to breathe. The offertory, too, can be a silent moment.

  249. I am familiar with the regrets expressed by many young priests who would like the Canon of the Mass to be recited in complete silence. The unity of the whole assembly, communing with the words pronounced in a sacred murmur, was a splendid sign of a contemplative Church gathered around the sacrifice of her Savior. In The Spirit of the Liturgy, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote:

  Anyone who has experienced a church united in the silent praying of the Canon will know what a really filled silence is. It is at once a loud and penetrating cry to God and a Spirit-filled act of prayer. Here everyone does pray the Canon together, albeit in a bond with the special task of the priestly ministry. Here everyone is united, laid hold of by Christ, and led by the Holy Spirit into that common prayer to the Father which is the true sacrifice—the love that reconciles and unites God and the world.

  Nevertheless, the intention of the liturgical reform was commendable: the Council Fathers wanted to rediscover the original function of the Eucharistic Prayer as a great public prayer in the presence of God. But we notice also a strong temptation to look for variety by introducing improvisations into the Canon. The liturgy now runs the risk of trivializing the words of the Eucharistic Prayer. And so I think that Cardinal Ratzinger was correct when he wrote in his “The Regensburg Tradition and the Reform of the Liturgy”, with reference to the Canon, “Must we not relearn this silent, inner co-praying with each other and with the angels and saints. . . and with Christ himself”, so that we do not lose “the real inner event of the liturgy, the departure from human speech into being touched by the eternal”? In his day he had proposed practical solutions and forcefully declared that the audible recitation of the Eucharistic Prayer in its entirety was not the only means of getting everyone to participate in this act. We must work for a more balanced solution and offer the possibility of intervals of silence in this area.

  250. Silence is an attitude of the soul. It cannot be decreed without appearing overrated, empty, and artificial. In the Church’s liturgies, silence cannot be a pause between two rituals; silence itself is fully a ritual, it envelops everything. Silence is the fabric from which all our liturgies must be cut. Nothing in them should interrupt the silent atmosphere that is its natural setting.

  Now, celebrations become tiring because they unfold in noisy chattering. The liturgy is sick. The most striking symptom of this sickness is perhaps the omnipresence of the microphone. It has become so indispensable that one wonders how priests were able to celebrate before it was invented. . . . I sometimes have the impression that celebrants fear the free, personal interior prayer of the faithful so much that they talk from one end of the ceremony to the other so as not to lose control of them. I think that such attitudes betray a profound lack of understanding of the insights of Vatican Council II. More than ever, the council’s teaching on the liturgy contained in Sacrosanctum Concilium must guide us. Fifty years after its promulgation, we are not yet done exploring its depth. It is high time to let the council teach us rather than to utilize it to justify our concerns about creativity.

  251. The goal of Sacrosanctum Concilium was the participation of everyone in the mystery that is made present in the sacred liturgy. In order to understand this intention, it is absolutely necessary to remember that one of the means proposed by the council for implementing it is sacred silence. Truly, it is about becoming participants in a sacred mystery that infinitely surpasses us: the mystery of the death of Jesus out of love for the Father and for us. Christians have the ardent obligation to be open to an act that is so mysterious that they will never be able to perform it by themselves: the sacrifice of Christ. In the thought of the Council Fathers, the liturgy is a divine action, an actio Christi. In the presence of it, we are overcome with a silence of admiration and reverence. The quality of our silence is the measure of the quality of our active participation.

  252. In 1985, in his famous book-length interview with Vittorio Messori, Cardinal Ratzinger stressed: “[Some have lost] sight of what is distinctive to the liturgy, which does not come from what we do but from the fact that something is taking place here that all of us together cannot ‘make’.”

  253. Silence poses the problem of the essence of the liturgy. Now the latter is mystical. Eastern Christians rightly speak about the “Divine Liturgy” and the “holy mysteries”. As long as we approach the liturgy with a noisy heart, it will have a superficial, human appearance. Liturgical silence is a radical and essential disposition; it is a conversion of the heart. Now, to convert, etymologically, is to turn around, to turn toward God. There is no real silence in liturgy unless we are turned toward the Lord in our heart. But true silence is the silence of our passions, the heart purified of carnal impulses, washed of all our hatreds and resentments, oriented toward the holiness of God. The more resplendent the priest’s chastity, the more he becomes, through his union with Christ, “a pure Victim, a holy Victim, a spotless Victim” and draws the whole people of God to “put on the new man, created after the likeness of God” (Eph 4:24).

  254. It is not enough simply to prescribe more silence. In order for everyone to understand that the liturgy turns us interiorly toward the Lord, it would be helpful if during the celebrations all of us together, priests and the faithful, turned bodily toward the east, symbolized by the apse. This way of doing things is still absolutely legitimate. It is in keeping with the letter and the spirit of the council. There is no lack of testimonies from the early centuries of the Church. As Xavier Accart judiciously notes in his marvelous book, Comprendre et vivre la liturgie [Understanding and Living the Liturgy].

  “When we stand to pray, we turn toward the east”, Saint Augustine explains, echoing a tradition that goes back, according to Saint Basil, to the Apostles themselves. Since the Churches were designed for the prayer of the first Christian communities, the Apostolic Constitutions recommended in the fourth century that they be “oriented”. And when the altar is in the west, as in Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the celebrant must turn toward the rising of the sun and thus be facing the people. The concern of the Church Fathers, therefore, was not so much to celebrate with one’s back or face to the people. . . but rather to face east.

  Then he adds:

  This bodily orientation of prayer, however, is only the sign of an interior “orientation”. O
rigen emphasizes—does he not?—that such a choice “symbolizes the soul that looks toward the rising of the true light” when he writes in the Gospel Parables: “From the east the favor granted by God comes to you; for from there is the man, ‘the Orient is his name’ (Zacharias 6:12, Douay-Rheims), who has been established ‘mediator between God and man’ (1 Tim 2:5). This is for you therefore an invitation to ‘look toward the east’ (Bar 4:36) always, whence rises for you the ‘Sun of righteousness’ (Mal 4:2), whence the light is born for you; so that you might never ‘walk in the darkness’ and ‘the last day’ may not overtake you in darkness (cf. Jn 12:35, 48).”

  Does the priest not invite the people of God to follow him at the beginning of the great Eucharistic Prayer by saying: “Lift up your hearts”, to which the people respond, “We lift them up to the Lord”?

  As Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, I am anxious once again to recall that celebration versus orientem is authorized by the rubrics of the Missal because it is part of apostolic tradition. There is no need for particular authorization to celebrate in this way, with the people and the priest turned toward the Lord. If physically it is not possible to celebrate ad orientem, it is necessary to place a cross on the altar, in plain sight, as a reference point for all. Christ on the Cross is the Christian Orient.

  255. Celebration toward the east fosters silence. Indeed, there is less temptation for the celebrant to monopolize the conversation. Facing the Lord, he is less tempted to become a professor giving a lesson throughout the Mass, reducing the altar to a podium centered on the microphone instead of the Cross. On the contrary, turned toward the east and the Cross, the celebrant becomes aware that he is, as Pope Francis often recalls, a shepherd who walks in front of the sheep. The priest remembers that he is an instrument in the hands of Christ the priest, that he must keep quiet so as to let the Word break through, that his human words are ridiculous compared to the one Eternal Word. I am convinced that we priests do not use the same tone of voice when we celebrate facing east. We are much less tempted to make a spectacle of ourselves, to mistake ourselves for actors, as Pope Francis says!

  Thus the whole assembly is as though drawn in after the priest by the silent mystery of the Cross. It ought to be possible in the parishes to implement regularly this way of celebrating Mass.

  This renewed entrance into the mystery would allow everyone to experience a silent, contemplative approach to doctrine and theology. These disciplines are the result, not of a laborious effort by a self-enclosed community, but, rather, of receptiveness in silence to the Word of God that precedes us and surprises us. The pope recalled in the Bull of Indiction of the Jubilee Year of Mercy that we must rediscover “the value of silence in order to meditate on the Word that comes to us”.

  256. Celebrating Mass facing east, by breaking up the face-to-face, private get-together, helps to prevent turning the liturgy into the community’s celebration of itself. On the contrary, when we turn toward the Lord, the liturgy allows us to return to the world with a new impetus and a truly missionary strength, so as to bring to it, not our poor, hollow, noisy experience, but the one Word, heard in silence.

  257. I refuse to waste our time pitting one liturgy against another or the rite of Saint Pius V against that of Blessed Paul VI. Rather, it is about entering into the great silence of the liturgy; it is necessary to know how to be enriched by all the Latin or Eastern liturgical forms that give a privileged place to silence. Without this contemplative spirit, the liturgy will remain an occasion for hateful divisions and ideological confrontations instead of being the place of our unity and of our communion in the Lord. It is high time to enter into this liturgical silence, turned toward the Lord, which the council intended to restore. What I am about to say now does not contradict my submission and obedience to the supreme authority of the Church. I deeply and humbly desire to serve God, the Church, and the Holy Father with devotion, sincerity, and a filial attachment. But here is my hope: God willing, when he wills and as he wills, the reform of the reform will take place in the liturgy. Despite the gnashing of teeth, it will happen, for the future of the Church is at stake. To ruin the liturgy is to ruin our relationship to God and the concrete expression of our Christian faith. The Word of God and the doctrinal teaching of the Church are still heard, but souls that desire to turn toward God and to offer him the true sacrifice of praise and adoration are no longer impressed by liturgies that are too horizontal, anthropocentric, and festive, often resembling noisy, popular cultural events. The media have totally invaded the Mass and transformed it into a spectacle, when actually it is the Holy Sacrifice, the memorial of the death of Jesus on the Cross for the salvation of our souls. The sense of mystery disappears through changes, permanent adaptations that are decided on autonomously and individually so as to seduce our modern, profane mentalities that are marked by sin, secularism, relativism, and the rejection of God. In many Western countries, we see the poor leaving the Catholic Church because she has been taken by storm by ill-intentioned persons who make themselves out to be intellectuals and despise the little ones and the poor. This is what the Holy Father should denounce loudly and clearly. For a Church without the poor is no longer the Church but a mere “club”. Today, in the West, how many empty, closed church buildings are destroyed or redesigned for profane use, regardless of their sacral character and original purpose. Nevertheless, I know that many priests and faithful Catholics live out their faith with extraordinary zeal and fight every day to preserve and enrich the houses of God.

  We must urgently rediscover the beauty, sacred character, and divine origin of the liturgy by remaining staunchly faithful to the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. In a conversation with Father Emonet, Charles Cardinal Journet tragically declared: “Liturgy and catechesis are the two jaws of the pincers with which the devil wants to steal the faith away from the Christian people and seize the Church so as to crush, annihilate, and destroy her definitively. Even today the great dragon is keeping watch on the woman, the Church, ready to devour her child.” Yes, the devil wants us to be opposed to each other at the very heart of the sacrament of unity and fraternal communion. Satan lashes out with his tail, trying to ravage the whole earth. But Jesus reassures us by saying to Peter: “Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren” (Lk 22:31-32).

  Silence is also mentioned frequently in the liturgical norms issued by many popes.

  258. Prayer is a conversation, a dialogue with the Triune God: although at some moments we address God, at others we keep silence so as to listen to him.

  259. Of course, the Eastern rites do not foresee times of silence during the Divine Liturgy. In fact, when the priest himself is not chanting—that is, when he prays silently, particularly during the anaphora, the Eucharistic Prayer, except for the words of the consecration, which are chanted aloud—you notice that the deacon, the choirs, or else the faithful sing uninterruptedly. Nevertheless, they are intensely aware of the apophatic dimension of their prayer, which is expressed by all sorts of adjectives and adverbs describing the Supreme Master of the Universe and Savior of our souls. For example, the “preface” of the Byzantine Rite says: “You are God—ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible.” Essentially, the Divine Liturgy is something of a plunge into the Mystery; it is celebrated behind the iconostasis, and the priest, who stands at the altar of sacrifice, often prays in silence. For Eastern Christians the iconostasis is the veil that protects the mystery. Among the Latins, silence is a sort of sonic iconostasis.

  260. In the West, in all its rites—Roman, Roman-Lyonnais, Carthusian, Dominican, Ambrosian—the priest’s silent prayer is not accompanied uninterruptedly by the singing of the choir or of the faithful. The Latin Mass has always included times of complete silence. Until the reform by Blessed Paul VI, this was the case especi
ally during the Canon, which was recited by the celebrant silently, in secreto, except in the rare instances of sacramental concelebration. It is true that in some places there was an attempt to fill up the void of this silence of several minutes—which in reality was only apparent—with the sound of the organ or by polyphonic singing, but this practice was not in keeping with the spirit of the rites.

  261. Vatican Council II prescribed that a time of silence should be maintained during the Eucharistic Sacrifice. Thus, the Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium decreed that “to promote active participation, the people should be encouraged to take part by means of acclamations, responses, psalmody, antiphons, and songs, as well as by actions, gestures, and bodily attitudes. And at the proper times all should observe a reverent silence.” The General Instruction of the Roman Missal of Blessed Paul VI, revised in the year 2002 by Saint John Paul II, specified many places in the Mass where such a silence must be observed.

  We find first this general reminder:

  Sacred silence also, as part of the celebration, is to be observed at the designated times. Its nature, however, depends on the moment when it occurs in the different parts of the celebration. For in the Penitential Act and again after the invitation to pray, individuals recollect themselves; whereas after a reading or after the Homily, all meditate briefly on what they have heard; then after Communion, they praise God in their hearts and pray to him.

  Even before the celebration itself, it is a praiseworthy practice for silence to be observed in the church, in the sacristy, in the vesting room, and in adjacent areas, so that all may dispose themselves to carry out the sacred action in a devout and fitting manner.