There are nights when I call You,
and the heavens do not answer.
I send my prayers into the darkness,
but they return wearing silence.
No thunder, no whisper,
no trembling of the stars,
only the long, unanswered ache of a soul reaching for the Infinite.

And yet, somehow,
I am not abandoned.

Something holds me when I have forgotten how to stand.
Something gathers the scattered fragments of my weary heart when even my faith has grown too tired to pray.

Could it be You?

Perhaps I have mistaken Your silence for Your absence,
because I have searched for You in the language of sound,
while You have been speaking in the deeper language of being.

Perhaps You are the stillness beneath my restless thoughts,
the unseen hand beneath my falling,
the quiet warmth beneath the ashes of all that I thought was lost.

O Hidden One,
how strange is Your nearness!
You come without arriving,
remain without appearing,
speak without words,
and love without announcing Yourself.

I have wanted a God I could understand,
a presence I could recognize,
a voice I could translate into the familiar grammar of certainty.

But You keep drawing me beyond the borders of my knowing, into that sacred wilderness where faith must breathe without explanations.

There, I begin to understand
not every silence is emptiness,
not every darkness is abandonment,
not every unanswered prayer is an unanswered love.

The seed grows in darkness.
The roots drink in secret.
The stars shine without making a sound.
And the earth is held in orbit by an invisible mystery.

So perhaps, my God, You are holding me, too.

Perhaps when I cannot find Your face,
I am resting within Your gaze.
When I cannot hear Your voice,
I am being carried by Your Word.
When I cannot feel Your presence,
I am breathing within the shelter of a love deeper than feeling.

Teach me, then, the contemplative patience of the soul.
Teach me to remain when answers do not come,
to trust when meanings dissolve,
to worship when wonder becomes wordless.

Let me not demand that You appear before I believe
You are here.
Let me not confuse my inability to perceive You
with Your inability to be present.

For You are the God who dwells beyond my understanding,
yet closer than my own breath;
the God who conceals without withdrawing,
ho remains mysterious without becoming distant.

And when the last word of my prayer falls into the silence,
let me discover that silence was never the end of our communion.

Perhaps it was the beginning of a deeper listening.

Perhaps it was where my soul,
released from the noise of knowing,
finally learned to rest in the mystery of being held.

And if I must walk through the night without seeing the dawn,
let this be enough:

You are here, even when I cannot name Your nearness.
You are love, even when I cannot interpret Your ways.
You are holding me,
even when I cannot feel Your hands.

And I shall remain
because I have begun to trust the Presence
within the Divine Silence.

~inspired by the book, WHEN GOD IS SILENT by Archbishop Luis M. Martinez
“God becomes the divine communication of silence.”