THE WORD OF GOD IN
OUR CARMELITE JOURNEY
My heart overflows with noble words…. (Psalm 45)
Prepared by The General Commission for Evangelization and Mission
1. The Word That Visits Me in The Silence Of My Solitude
Then a voice came to me….
Listening to the scriptures:
…. for while gentle silence enveloped all things, and night in its swift course was not half gone, your all-powerful word leapt from heaven, from the royal throne ... (Wis 18:14)
The house was built with stone finished at the quarry, so that neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron was heard in the temple while it was being built. (1 Kings 6:7)
….and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then a voice came to him.... (1 Kings 19:12-13)
From the RIVC:
From Elijah we learn how to remain in God’s presence. As we become accustomed to his presence and as we learn to receive it silently, we begin to “breathe almost exclusively the essence of God, as we breathe the air around us”. (RIVC # 37)
Listening to the Carmelite tradition:
The Father spoke one Word, which was His Son, and this Word He always speaks in eternal silence, and in silence must it be heard by the soul. (John of the Cross, Maxims and counsels, 21)
The visible events that renew the face of the earth are anticipated in the silent dialogue of the souls consecrated to God..... Jesus gave himself to solitary prayer in the quiet of the night, atop the mountain, in the desert, far from people ... (Edith Stein, “The Prayer of the Church” in The Hidden Life, The Collected Works of Edith Stein, Washington: ICS Publications, 2014, p.11)