Wednesday is silent... If anything happened, the holy writers have drawn the veil... Everything that God could say before the Upper Room had been said... It was man's turn now... Perhaps there were quiet words in a corner of the Garden, both to His children who would flee and to His Father who would stay... Wednesday was His... The heart of that mad, crowded Holy Week was quiet... Tomorrow the soliders would come, and Friday there would be God's great signature in the sky... Thursday and Friday would belong to time and eternity, but Wednesday was of heaven alone...
Silent Wednesday... If our Lord needed it, how much more we whose life is the story of the Hosanna and the Crucify... Time for prayer, for adoration... Time to call the soul into the inner court and the Garden... In our crowded world we are lonely because we are never alone... No time to go where prayer is the only sound and God is the only light... We need more silent Wednesdays... In the glory of the Cross above our dust our silence can become purging and peace... God speaks most clearly to the heart that is silent before Him...
[from the devotional writings of O. P Kretzmann, published in The Pilgrim, pp. 27, 28]
1 comment:
There is a story about silence in 1 Kings 18 and 19, that continues to puzzle me. Do we ever notice that there is a contradiction when, on one Sunday, we celebrate the raucous victory of Elijah over the prophets of Baal, and on the next Sunday, we piously marvel at the mystery of the “Great Silence”, when God confronts Elijah on Mount Horeb (Sinai).
In 1 Kings 3, we find out that Elijah was afraid of Jezebel. The chronology is a little confusing, but in 1 Kings 21, Elijah, face to face with Ahab, without any signs of fear, tells Ahab that his, and his wife’s, Jezebel’s blood, will be licked by dogs. Why then was he afraid of Jezebel after his triumph over the prophets of Baal?
When Adam and Eve first sinned, they became afraid of God. Can fear be a sign of sin?
Was the “Great Silence” a condemnation of the very “loud” killing of the prophets of Baal?
God decided to replace Elijah after these events. Why?
God brought Elijah to heaven like no other person ever. Elijah was present at the Transfiguration.
Elijah is one of the greatest prophets and God continued to honor him many years after Elijah went to heaven. Yet there seems to be something in these events that displeased God. Nevertheless, God continued to honor Elijah, as He honored Moses, who was also taken to heaven for cause.
Is there any relationship between God’s silence on Mount Horeb, and God’s silence on Wednesday?
Peace and Joy!
George A. Marquart
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