Where are you, reader, right now? Are you in some city, where all around there are people, the rumble and honking of traffic, conversations – warm or sharp, the sounds of unseen activities – metal striking metal, someone drilling something, a tram rattling past? Do these sounds keep you from hearing God’s voice?
Perhaps you are in the countryside, where all around there are only the songs of birds, the rustling of the wind, the patter of tiny, unseen feet? Is it easier for you to hear God there?
Perhaps you are using a break at work to drop in on the internet, while all around you there are ringing telephones, the jingling of cash registers, the conversations of coworkers – official or personal?
Perhaps you are alone in your room, where triple-glazed windows hold back all the sounds of the world, where you can choose what sound to let into your space – radio, computer, television?
No matter where you are, what does Holy Week mean to you in this moment? How will you free up a gap in your surroundings so that silence and peace can flow into you and give time for reflection and prayer?
It is interesting that in many church traditions this week, from Palm Sunday to Easter, is called Holy Week – Holy Week, Semana Santa, and so on. In Germany the word Karwoche is also used – the Week of Cares or Sorrows. But in Latvian churches, similarly to some German churches, we call it precisely the Quiet Week. In my childhood, during these days I was not allowed to romp about, to play with a ball, to meet friends from school; on Good Friday we spoke quietly, everything happened in a hushed way, as if we were seized by awe before the otherworldly story of the struggle between life and death, which we hear and live through every year, and which thus transformed our everyday life, making it calmer. And it is not at all a bad thing to have such a time – perhaps an hour, perhaps a day or a week – that ‘puts us in our place,’ that presses the pause button and allows us to stop and grow still. As people often say now, such moments allow us to be ‘here and now.’
As it is written in the Book of Jeremiah:
Thus says the Lord:
“Stand at the crossroads and look,
ask for the ancient paths –
where is the good way?
Then walk in it!
Find a place of rest for your souls! (Jeremiah 6:16)
Such moments, when we set aside the covering of the world’s bustle and din, when we stand defenseless at the crossroads and look, when we are truly silent (not just stopping speaking) – such moments allow God’s voice to sound louder in our hearts and souls. Then questions also arise in us that the everyday rush otherwise stifles; perhaps answers to these essential questions may even surface.
One more thing: such a time of silence gives us strength on Good Friday, the culmination of Holy Week, to come to the cross of Christ and to that great love which shines from the darkness-enshrouded hill of Golgotha. For it is hard and painful to watch Jesus’ death – even if we know that it is not the end, and that the apparent defeat will be transformed into rejoicing and joy.
I wish for every one of us, and for you too, dear reader, in this Holy Week, to open even a small gap for silence and peace, to find a place of rest for the soul, and to go further along the good way, hand in hand with Christ.
God of our wilderness and despair, when our din grows so loud that we no longer hear You, lead us to the quiet place. Open the ears of our heart to hear You deeply and truly. Amen.
(adapted from the Church of England’s Lenten prayers – https://www.chpublishing.co.uk/apps/watch-and-pray)
Rev. Jāna Jēruma-Grīnberga