Introduction to the Winter 2009 Communio

Winter 2009: Silence and Prayer

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The Winter, 2009 issue of Communio is dedicated to the theme of “Silence and Prayer.” “In our days,” writes Pope Benedict XVI, “when in vast areas of the world the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame that no longer has fuel, the overriding priority is to make God present in this world and to show men and women the way to God. Not just any god, but the God who spoke on Sinai; to that God whose face we recognize in a love which presses ‘to the end’ (cf. Jn 13:1)—in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen.” This renewed awareness of the presence of God in the world can only be rooted in prayer, which in turn requires silence. Christian prayer is a path to God because it is first and foremost a receptive response to God’s address to mankind in the Word which “resounds through all times as a present reality.”

William L. Brownsberger, in “Silence,” observes that the contemporary disdain of silence, as witnessed by the incessant chatter of radio and television, represents an abdication of an activity that is fundamental to personality: recollection in silence. “Silence is not an empty space to be filled but is full of meaning for him who has ears to hear it. The person draws himself toward silence by collecting himself — his faculty, attentions, and intentions — and yet it is silence itself, with its Word beyond all human significance,” that opens the person to the presence of the Other who is closer to him than he is to himself (Augustine).

Roch Kereszty, in “Prayer in the Life of the Priest,” reflects on the vocation of the ministerial priest who participates in a unique way in the threefold office of Jesus Christ. As servants of Christ and servants of the Christian people (cf. 2 Cor 4:5) the priest bears witness to the crucified and risen Christ, who “extends himself into the very being of the worshiper, pray[ing] and suffer[ing] through him, with him, and in him. In this way he turns our life and sufferings into a well-pleasing sacrifice to his Father.” “The priest needs time,” continues Kereszty, “time spent in adoration before the Eucharist, in order to become more aware of the incredible mystery of this exchange.”

Jean-Pierre Batut, in “Praying to the Father in the Son Through the Spirit: Reflections on the Specificity of Christian Prayer,” shows how Jesus takes up and fulfills the entire prayer of Israel. If man’s search for God “is always preceded by a more original movement of God toward the seeker,” it is in Jesus that “man is given the capacity of a new kind of invocation that at last responds to the plenitude of the divine word of address.” In Jesus we receive the grace to be able to say “our Father.”

Robert Spaemann, in “How Could You Do What You Did?” reflects on the phenomenon of shame as “a guardian against objectification, a guardian of interiority and of one’s own body as the presence and expression of this interiority. In this way shame is at the service of personal love.” A culture that doubts the value of shame or modesty, or that reduces shame to a biological or social function, threatens “the tender roots of our very humanity.”

José Granados, in “The Body, Hope, and the Disclosure of the Future,” interprets the words of Paul that “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Rom 5:3–4). The link between suffering and hope passes through the body and the promise of Resurrection: “Suffer ing, by helping us recover the awareness of bodiliness, opens up for us a new horizon of temporality. True, suffering is powerless by itself to restructure our time, but it allows love to be manifested in our life, in the form of compassion, which brings with it a promise of fulfillment.”

Christopher D. Denny, in “Which Holy Child? German Romantic Rivals to Balthasar’s Theology of Youth,” reflects on the anthropological and theological significance of childhood in the writings of Novalis, Hölderlin, and Balthasar. While all three authors reject the condescending view of childhood characteristic of modernity, only Balthasar is able to break radically from the individualistic legacy of Kant and Fichte. The Incarnation of the Eternal Son opens up a new horizon of childhood by showing us that “prayerful gratitude can be given at any age of life.”

Rodolfo Balzarotti, in “William Congdon: Action Painting and the Impossible Iconography of the Christian Mystery,” traces the hidden connections between William Congdon, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman. It is surprising to see how each of these three representatives of Abstract Expression was drawn, albeit for different reasons, to “religious” themes. Congdon was able to go further than his colleagues because in his paintings the tension between art and religion is taken up and sustained by the higher union of humanity and divinity in Christ, and thus the mystery of Christ’s “ultimate desolation and his greatest glory.”

Notes and Comments closes our theme with a meditation by Jonah Lynch on “Music, Silence, and Technology.” “Music is most fully itself,” Lynch argues, “when it is created and enjoyed in community.” In this sense, the phenomenon of recorded music together with the ubiquitous use of iPods undermines our ability to experience the true nature of music with its concrete temporality and pregnant silence.

-NJH

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