Question 10.171

10.171 What made it possible for Saint Augustine to write in The City of God this magnificent statement: “God does not speak, but his voice is clear; he illuminates little, but his light is pure”?

God is a silent lover and a lighthouse so bright that it remains invisible. Genuine love does not speak. Are not wordless smiles the most beautiful? God’s silence is a voice, the most profound of all.

All creation speaks of God, thanks to its marvelous silence. In the Paschal night, all our lives are born.

Our life of faith most often walks in the night. The more faith has to confront trials, the stronger it becomes. Nights of faith always end with finding the little light of God.

In the life of Saint Augustine, God was always present. In the times when he was straying, heaven might appear to have been less obvious. Nevertheless, God never ceased to watch over him, and Augustine ended up responding to a voice that was not speaking. Then he never stopped seeking him until he took his final breath. In the Confessions, the bishop of Hippo writes these extraordinary words:

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you!

You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created.

You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all.

You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you.

I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace. When once I shall be united to you with my whole being, I shall at last be free of sorrow and toil.

Then my life will be alive, filled entirely with you. When you fill someone, you relieve him of his burden, but because I am not yet filled with you, I am a burden to myself.¹/

 Our world is often astray, as was young Augustine. It ardently searches without knowing where truth is found. It searches along a thousand paths, trying to believe in eternal life. Through many artificial paradises it searches for joy, simplicity, and beauty. In fog and sunlight, our world is searching for its Father and its God. For, in the human heart, one that knows him or one that is still searching for him, there is already the luminous presence of God.

NOTES

III

¹ Christian Cochini, S.J., Apostolic Origins of Priestly Celibacy, trans. Nelly Marans (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), 4-5. Back to text.

² John Paul II, Letter to Priests on the Occasion of Holy Thursday 1979, 8. Back to text.

IV

¹ Joseph Ratzinger with Vittorio Messori, The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive Interview on the State of the Church, trans. Salvator Attanasio and Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985). Back to text.

² Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, trans. John Saward (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000). Back to text.

³ Ibid., 58. Back to text.

⁴ John of the Cross, The Spiritual Canticle 29, 3, in The Collected Works of St.

John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D., and Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D. (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1979), 524. Back to text.

⁵ John Paul II, Memory and Identity (New York: Rizzoli, 2005), 11. Back to text.

/ Jacques Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1997). Back to text.

⁷ Alexandre Soljenitsyne, L’Erreur de l’Occident (Paris: Grasset, 1980). Back to text.

VI

¹ Albert Camus, L’Homme révolté (Paris: Gallimard, 1951). Back to text.

² The Gay Science, trans. Thomas Common (Digireads.com Publishing, 2009), 79-80. Back to text.

³ Joseph Ratzinger, On the Way to Jesus Christ (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 46-47. Back to text.

⁴ Augustine, On Lying, 43, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, first series, ed. Philip Schaff (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1995), 477. Back to text.

⁵ The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal, trans. Charles Kegan Paul (Whitefish, Mont.: Kessinger, 2010), 56, 59. Back to text.

/ Blaise Pascal, Thoughts, trans. W. F. Trotter, Harvard Classics 48 (New York:

Collier & Son, 1910), 54. Back to text.

VII

¹ Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1956), 276. Back to text.

² “Efficacy of Patience”, in St. Teresa of Avila, The Collected Works, trans.

Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D., and Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D., vol. 3 (Washington, D.C., ICS Publications, Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1985), 386. Back to text.

³ Ascent of Mount Carmel, in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D., and Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D. (Washington, D.C.: ICS Publications, Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1979), 99. Back to text.

⁴ Merton, Sign of Jonas, 297. Back to text.

⁵ Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Love a Fruit Always in Season, ed. Dorothy S. Hunt (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 58. Back to text.

VIII

¹ Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, trans. Emma Crawford and Mario von der Ruhr (1952; London and New York: Routledge Classics, 2002), 69, 84. Back to text.

X

¹ Homily for the opening Mass of the Synod of Bishops, Second Special Assembly for Africa, October 4, 2009, reprinted in French in Africae Munus, no.

13. Back to text.

² John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, trans. Jenny McPhee and Martha McPhee (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 66. Back to text.

³ Thomas Merton, The Sign of Jonas (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1956). Back to text.

⁴ Père Jérôme, Écrits monastiques (Montrouge: Sarment, 2002). Back to text.

⁵ Trans. in The Liturgy of the Hours (New York: Catholic Book Pub. Co., 1975), 4:182-83. Back to text.

/ Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, trans. Ronald Knox and Michael Oakley (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1959), 120. Back to text.

⁷ Une Histoire de la messe: Introduite par deux conférences du Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger à Font-gombault (Le Nef, 2009), 26. Back to text.

⁸ Aline Lizotte, L’Obéissance du Christ et le mystère de piété (Avignon: Éd. AFCP, 2007). Back to text.

/ Joseph Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, trans. John Saward (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 18-19. Back to text.

¹0 Trans. in Liturgy of the Hours 3:273-74. Back to text.