A piece of writing from
MOTHER TRINIDAD DE LA SANTA MADRE IGLESIA,
from the 2nd of April, 1972. Title:
THE VOICES OF THE SILENCE
THAT IN THE SILENCE SPEAKS
When, silenced, the soul perceives the voice of the Eternal One, it breaks, in its clamours, in quiet breeze and in flames of fire, the silence.
Silence speaks as though in melodies of faint concerts…Silence speaks in its sonorous and secret ringing, in mystery.
It is something profound what the soul listens, I do not manage to tell, when, transcended, it hears in prayer the voices of the Word in silence.
Nothing explains so much God’s speech, as this mystery of nothing to say that, in its touchings, silence contains in concert.
It is conversations… sweet melodies in breezes of fire… eternal romances… unprecedented words… voices of cautery, in secret;
something which escapes… something that is so great shrouded in veils, that it is a saying of God, silent and sacred, that it is the Immense One Himself in His fires.
O if I managed to express the voices that I press in my chest…! which come and go, when the soul manages to remain in silence, very quiet.
Three classes of silence are perceived, in sacred savouring of eternal mystery, there in the depth of the spirit, in the inner contact, sacrosanct and silenced of the soul with God, and in the times before the tabernacle, immersed in the mystery of the Lord of the Sacrament Who hides, silenced behind the nights of mystery, waiting should someone come to visit Him.
One –the silence of well-being, of savouring, of sweetness, of peace, of rapture–, the one that the soul experiences which, savouring somehow the proximity of the Eternal One, seeks, led by the soft and silent desire that it perceives in its interior, the solitude;
in which it rests lovingly, reposing in the proximity of Him Whom it loves; as though leaning on the chest of Jesus Who waits for it tireless so that, after the search for Him who hurtles to His encounter, it may perceive His delightful, savoury and silent presence, which somehow speaks to it, in the mystery of Jesus’ proximity, so silently and supernaturally that, without knowing how it is, is separation from earthly things and sapientially loving and communicative union of the spirit with the God of the Sacrament.
The one who seeks God behind the doors of the tabernacle or in the recondite recesses of his heart, persisting, finds Him in a repose of peace and a secret and delightful savouring that makes him rest, without knowing anything, without wanting anything, without seeking anything and without hearing anything, under the smooth and savoury wisdom of something supernatural that makes the spirit rest in a relish of silenced silence that for nothing of this world he would want to lose.
Wherefore, very still, the soul rests in a savouring that is life, proximity of the Beloved; being as though transcended in that which alone perceives and will know how to express the one who, next to the foot of the tabernacle or in the recondite and deep recesses of his interior, knows something, in loving tasting, of the proximity of the Good sought and found, in the mysterious secret of the recondite arcanum of the spirit: «I will lead the soul to the solitude and there I will speak to its heart».
Into the solitude in the things of the here, and to the search of the encounter with God Who waits for us tireless, under the sacramental species, become Bread out of love, century after century, without tiring, behind the doors of the tabernacle, should someone come to visit Him so as to be with Him in colloquies of love, in sweet and intimate loving company.
Wherefore one must seek times to be at the Tabernacle in silence. And next to Jesus, in loving, peaceful, silent wait and gradually one experiences in a secret, but profound and silenced manner, the proximity of the God alive, living and palpitating, Who says to our heart: «And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age».
Jesus likes to be sought by those whom He loves, to manifest to them His secret of love behind the silenced notes of the quiet breeze of silence.
«Near distance…,
nostalgia for the Eternal One…,
sweet melancholy
of God…
Long hours of wait
call me to silence,
where the Love of loves
loved me.
Mysteries of the Tabernacle
that the loving soul senses,
in silent days
of Sun…
Luminary of my eyes!
fire of my volcanoes!,
dawn of my life
in heat…!
I run seeking anxious
the safe end
that to brim in my struggles
my gift.
Secret is my race
in search of the Love».
5-1-1974
Behind this silence, lived in intimacy with Jesus in the Eucharist or by the presence of God in the recondite and intimate recesses of our heart, where the soul-Church through grace, by means of its life of faith, participates in the mystery of God in His Trinity of Persons dwelling in it and being communicated to it in participation in loving life, under the silent and sacrosanct murmur of the Holy Spirit;
persevering in the search for the God of its heart, quietly and gradually, is being introduced, and as though transcended, into another silence which is not earthly; that, rather than silence, is a silent… profound rumour… that is a likeness of faint concerts that fill the soul with recollection, feeling near the Eternal Love, but without possessing Him in the right way that the love rapidly needs it, in the bridal chamber of the Infinite Being, immersed and penetrated into His sacred silence.
The silence of the things of the here brings the soul into contact with God; and this inner silence fills it with life and makes it capable of listening to the Word, of receiving Him, of grasping Him, of perceiving His conversation, of tasting His mystery, of feeding on His joy, on His life, on His perfection and on His secret…
And what a marvellous profundity, so secret, so tender, so mysterious, so savourable, so near, and at the same time so distant and so different from the silence of created things, this silence has, that, in its created way, brings us into contact with the Uncreated One and is speech of God spirit to spirit…!
«What does silence have,
in the melodies
of its sweet notes,
that speaks of Immense One…?
What does silence have,
that it invites to adore,
all transcended,
before His mystery…?
What does silence have,
that it wounds in the soul
and leaves it anointed
in breezes of Heaven?
What does silence have,
that it permeates, in its gift,
all that is life
with its quiet touch…?
What does silence have,
that it speaks of God
only in the touching
of His tenuous kiss?
What does silence have,
that, without saying anything,
with its deep breeze
speaks to me of the Eternal One?
What does silence have…?
What do its notes have…?
What do its breezes have…?
What do its fires have…?».
22-4-1972
And there is a third silence that is different and distant from every earthly thing, because it is proximity of Him who is in possession of the mystery of the Eternal One, and that submerges the spirit and silences it in the infinite Mystery of His profundity. And there, inside that depth, makes it listen to conversations in eternal voices of the Being.
Conversations that are not words, but that is savoury wisdom of secret silence. But a wisdom so lofty and silent and a silence so savoury, that the soul knows savourably and delectably –without knowing– how it is not precisely that it is savouring the sweetness of the earthly silence, even though it be spiritual, but rather that it is immersed and inebriated in the possession of the Silence that God is; that, in cloistral loving compliments, are voices of fire that communicate to the spirit something so mysterious, so unprecedented, so profound and so secret, that the Infinite Silence alone knows how to tell in the savoury conversation of His voices…
Because the Silence that God is, are voices! voices of wisdom in concert of peace and in romance of love; voices of eternal life; voices that the open spirit understands that are melody in proximity of Eternity… melody of Eternity that are communication of the Eternal One and manifestation of His attributes and perfections in savoury wisdom of divine and consubstantial Silence.
«When God immerses me inside into the voices
that the Silence contains,
I remain submerged in the most profound depth
of His concealment;
and there, without words, I answer in my style
in the way I can,
without anything to say with earthly phrases
of all I understand.
Profound secrets of the eternal voice
of the Word in my chest…!
Oh, how much I discover inside the depth
that I press in my bosom…!:
They are cloistral voices, sweet melodies
of eternal concerts…,
sonorous loves of the Being in my soul,
with tender accents…
It is so much and so sweet, so much in love
what I hold inside!,
that the Silence breaks into sacred speeches,
inside, in my cauteries.
How sweet! how deep,
how tender and secret
it is to taste the voices
that the Silence contains!».
13-3-1975
One thing is to feel the silence of creation that, with its inanimate voice, speaks to us of the Immense One or the sweetness of the spiritual silence, with its peace, its joy, its transcendence in our times of prayer or in the silence of the spirit; and another is to feel introduced into God, who is the eternal, consubstantial, subsistent and divine Silence. It is like a leap from the created to the Uncreated, from the human creature to the Creator, from the human to the divine.
It is true that, at the proximity of God, the soul, in one or another manner, is introduced into the more or less supernatural silence, or more or less transcendent; led by Him to the separation from the things of the here and submerged in the inebriation of the sapiential joy of His proximity.
But how can it be compared with what one experiences when God makes Himself live in the attribute of silence, which, breaking into voices of communication, spells out in delicate whistling the savoury wisdom of His infinite attributes and perfections…?!
Since, when the soul, lifted off every thing of the here and submerged in the sacrosanct silence of the Being, feels introduced into the Silence and attracted by Him; as it introduces itself, it perceives in the depth of the spirit a touching of unprecedented concerts, in a profundity and in a «something» fine and delicate; so deep inside, so secret and so supernatural! that is experienced in the deep depth of the quiet silence of the spirit.
And it discovers itself there, in the very depths of the being, there inside, inside…! in such a way that all the noises, the thoughts and the imaginations that might come, all that may be different and distant from that perception which is being experienced in the depth of the Coeternal Being in His consubstantial silence, everything, everything! tastes to the soul of breakage and impediment to that which it is living in the innermost and sealed space of its spirit.
When the soul, in its silence, brings itself into direct contact with God, spirit to spirit, it seems that all the noises on earth increase when feeling the touch of the Eternal Silence that is introducing it slowly, lifting it off everything of the here with the breeze of His passing and the brush of His flight, savoury and delectable, in that delicate savouring that brings it into direct union with God Himself.
Seeming to whoever lives this as if he experienced the separation of the soul and the body; increasing all the external noises up to terrible dimensions, and being all the things as though a very strong shock that painfully affect him in the marrow of the being.
What a martyrdom my spirit suffers at the contact with God in silence, and at His power that drives me irresistibly and heartrendingly to say what I have within me and the struggle of not knowing how to expound it…!
«In the silence I seek You,
in the silence I find You,
in the silence I live You,
and in thirst for silence I die.
There is nothing that says so much
as the voice of silence,
where God Himself reveals Himself
in silent mystery.
When I penetrate into the depth
of the silence of my Word,
I listen to the way God speaks
in kiss of Coeternal.
God is infinite Silence
who, in silence, is uttering
His silent Word
in silent fluttering;
fluttering of pure love
in His kissing in concert.
God is divine Silence…
Children, how profound this is!
Silence, in the Eucharist,
silence, in the high Heavens,
silence, inside the soul,
silence, when the fire burns…,
because Silence, in His life,
is the Coeternal Being.».
13-2-1975
Three classes of silence does my being know, the first two are a prelude to the third and preparation for it, but as though infinitely different and distant.
To be introduced in the Silence of the being it is necessary that the soul has been previously totally possessed and captivated, in rapture and loss of everything of the here, by the savoury silence that the proximity of God’s passing instils into the spirit.
After this silence, the Infinite Love takes the Bride of the Holy Spirit and, bringing it into His bosom, He makes it pass from the spiritual silence to the unfathomable abyss of His Being Himself Silence. And there, in the deep depth of His mystery, in life of Eternity, tells it, in the conversation of His eternal wisdom, His Being Himself, in eternal melodies of infinite and coeternal concerts.
And when, engrossed and seized by the silence in the proximity of the possession of the Subsistent Being, infinite and eternal, it begins to experience that this one is not the silence that it needs, even though it is to it so profoundly savourable; then it is when the soul is being prepared by God to be introduced into the bridal chamber, recondite and sealed, of His sacred Silence.
And it perceives as if some gates were opened which separate everything of the here from the Infinite; and that, without knowing how, in an instant of indescribable silence and in a flight of mysterious transcendence, it is introduced and kept into the Silence of the Being, leaving as though infinitely distant the silences which, for it, were a right and assured way that brought it to the sumptuous door of the eternal and the infinite Silence which is God.
And once introduced into that profound depth, the soul experiences that, behind it, the door was closed, and that an abyss of separation exists between the created silence and the Uncreated One, as it could exist between life and death, between earth and Heaven, between the All and the nothing, between the creature and the Creator; going from living, through the silence of the here, to the infinite Silence which is God in His being, in the eternal conversation of His subsistent and consubstantial silence, that are unprecedented voices of divine concerts.
Today I have comprehended and lived, in a new manner, the complete and absolute separation between the created silence and the uncreated one, between the silences with small letter and the Silence with capital letter which God is Himself, under the silent and sacrosanct notes of the mystery at God’s passing in kiss of the Eternal One.
My silence is God in cloistral voices of eternal mystery. And when my soul enters into the volcano of His eternal fire, it tastes –from tasting– the divine nectar of its captivity. And it feels imprisoned, and it feels wounded in its very center, all of it submerged in the deep crater of the open volcano.
Everything is a martyrdom for seeing that I do not say that which I feel that Silence is, and that cannot be said among veils; that which my word does not know how to say with these manners, phrases and concepts, however much I try with my poor accent!
Today I have comprehended in a new way that the Silence is God, in this silence which I perceive when I enter inside.
At last today I have broken with this mystery; for, when I said that I went to silence, I always perceived a deep secret that, in its transcendence, tasted to me of Eternal, without my knowing its deciphering yet… And the thing is that my Silence was not of the here, it was Heavens’!
And that is why I wander alone in my exile, because I always call in the way that I can, with my expressions, human that which is eternal.
My Silence is God…! It is voices of Heaven… it is conversations in unprecedented concert that my soul tastes when I have my God…
Today I have understood in a new way the profundities of my three silences: One that is repose in peace of solace; another proximity of the God of the Heavens; but another one is cloistral voices of the Eternal One.
The three are savoury, the three are very good; some are earthly, another one Heavenly.
One leads to the other. One is achieved by dint of efforts; another one, which is touch of God, kiss of cautery, sweet proximity, which brings the soul to soar up, which seeks in its demanding, with its relish, the fires of Heaven.
But the other one is God who speaks in secret, inside, in the substance, of His great mystery; it is explanation in voices of fire, communications in His very Bosom of the attributes that, in discovery, God gives us for free in sweet encounters! without man being able to have it by dint of his own favour and to taste the gift of the eternal Silence.
Today I have grasped the great difference that the mystery teaches. Today I have grasped, in a sweet way and in a new way, that Silence is life, so much! that it is eternal: it is the Eternity lived in exile.
Mother Trinidad de la Santa Madre Iglesia.
An extract from Booklet No. 16 – Collection: “Light in the night. The mystery of Faith given with loving wisdom.”
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