If you were ever the new kid on the block, in the classroom, on the team, and remember how you just wanted to fit in... Or if you ever loved from afar and dreamed of being with a person who seemed too good, too beyond you and your clumsy efforts, and can remember how you just wanted to be close and somehow you just did not know how to do it... Or if ever you were all alone, far from home and had to eat in a restaurant by yourself at a teeny table and longed for family, someone familiar, a friend, the warmth of home and table, then perhaps you get a glimpse of what God is trying to do in the Incarnation. It as if for ages God had been trying to get closer, longing for intimacy with each of us, longing to be ordinary and hidden in our midst. Finally in Christ Jesus, God's desire for intimacy with humankind takes flesh. In Jesus God gives Everything, indeed His very Self. God always makes the first move toward us in love. “Love consists in this, not that we have loved God, but that God has loved us and sent us his Son.” God so loves us, that He is always, constantly, very gently trying to get our attention. Monastic silence is only possible if we believe that we are so deeply loved and sought after by God. We need to feel safe to be silent. And anyone who has been in love knows that there are times in a loving relationship when words are unnecessary or would even inappropriate. Love makes silence possible, appropriate, meaningful, and secure. Silence depends on love and leads to love. Once again in the silence that love engenders, we are invited by Christ our Lord and Master and King to notice His divine presence in the least, the lowest, and the last.
