Sunday Meditation: Seeking Holy Tranquility

How will you nurture "holy tranquility"
 in your life?

How many people today are caught up in noise and glitter, flashing lights and endless confusion? Most I think. The only way out is the remedy Monsignor Romana Guardini describes below -- finding a place of silence, of "holy tranquility." 

We desperately need silence so we can hear the Lord's still, small voice. If we fill our lives with endless noise by smart phone, TV, music and talk radio, internet social networks, conversation, etc. we will forever be on the merry-go-round of confusion. Life will spin past and we will miss the most important parts as we mindlessly ride in circles with lights flashing around us and calliope noise filling our ears. 

A soul can only come to know and love God through nurturing silence so that the heart longs for

intimate union with the creator who speaks to us through silences. As Msgr. Guardini puts it:

Man needs a place of holy tranquility that the breast of God pervades and where he meets the great figures of the faith. This place is the inaccessibility of God himself, which only Christ opens to man. 

Are we living as though we are on an
amusement park ride going nowhere?

All prayer begins by man becoming silent --- recollecting his scattered thoughts, feeling remorse at his trespasses, and directing his thoughts toward God. If man does all this, this place is thrown open, not only as a domain of spiritual tranquility and mental concentration, but as something that comes from God. 

We are always in need of this place, especially when the convulsions of the times make clear something that has always existed but which is sometimes hidden by outward well-being and a prevailing peace of mind: namely, the homelessness of our lives. In such times, a great courage is demanded from us; not only a readiness to dispense with more and to accomplish more than usual, but to persevere in a vacuum we do not otherwise notice. So we require more than ever this place of which we speak, not to creep into as a hiding place, but as a place to find the core of things, to become calm and confident once more.

You can find a place of holy tranquility anywhere there is silence. What speaks to you of God without words? Your local parish church where Jesus waits in the tabernacle? A favorite spot in nature? A book of religious art that lifts your mind to the Mother of God and to the life, passion, and death of Jesus, our Savior? A favorite room in your own home?

It doesn't matter where you are physically as long as it's a "domain of spiritual tranquility." And that is where you will meet God and hear His voice. Most of us will never experience a vision or a locution, but we can all meet God and "hear" his voice in the silence of our hearts. He waits for each one of us, longing for an intimate individual union. We can understand that reality more and more by reading and meditating on the lives of the saints who united their hearts, minds, and wills to God. Along with Jesus and Mary, they teach and show us the path to God.

Where will we meet the Lord today? Let us walk with Mary praying the rosary and she will lead us to her Son. "Do whatever He tells you," she says. But we can only do that if we listen intently for His voice. "If today you hear His voice, harden not your hearts."

Our Lady of the rosary, pray for us.