Providence and Silence
Immaculate Conception Academy Commencement Address, June 5, 2021
Dear Reverend Fathers, Sisters, Colleagues, Parents, Friends, and Students—
It is an honor to be here today. It is an honor to be able to address you, soon to be graduates, in this special capacity. I am happy to have the chance to teach you one last time, and to offer you a bit of advice.
Graduates, you are soon to become part of a very select group of men, of which I am a member. I speak to you today, not only as your teacher, but as an alumnus of ICA. Twenty years ago, I too graduated from this school. I sat in a folding chair next to the stage in the church basement. Petrified with nervousness, I gave a speech, woodenly delivered.
When I graduated I did not expect to stand here before you today, in this capacity. I had other plans. But divine providence has brought me here. And I am happy it has. Of course, thinking about the past twenty years while wondering what to say today, I was led to reflect on divine providence.
What do we think of when we hear “divine providence”? Most likely, we think of, well, God providing, especially in the context of our earthly lives. And, indeed, this is a part of divine providence. Christ Himself tells us this. In a very poignant passage in the Gospel of St. Matthew, when Christ is sending His Apostles out to preach, and they are, no doubt, anxious about what will happen to them in His absence; He reminds them of God’s solicitude, saying “Are not sparrows sold two for a penny? And yet it is impossible for one of them to fall to the ground without your heavenly Father’s will… Do not be afraid, therefore. You are more valuable than many sparrows.” More valuable than many sparrows! I always liked that line—it would seem condescending, even sarcastic, if it were not said in such a fatherly way. The tone of the line reminds me very much of the tone that I, as a father, must use with a very small child who is worried about Mama, who is not home. I know the child’s fear is irrational, and even silly, but I also know that the child’s pain is real, and so I have to remind him, very gently, that Mama has gone to the store, and has not, in fact, been eaten by a bear. In the same tone Christ reminds me that I am more valuable than many sparrows.
And this is a comfort! In a bad day, or week, or month, when the principal is grumpy and the students are restive and things seem broken and the bank account is low, I do take comfort in the fact that I am worth a lot of birds. In fact, because I have delved deeply into the writings of the Angelic Doctor, I know that I am worth all the birds. No, I am worth more than all the birds. In fact, I am more valuable than the stars in the heavens. And so are you. Thus God, who through the love that is His very nature, made us in His image and likeness, and holds us ut pupillam oculi, will never let us slip through His fingers, provided we do not wriggle out of them on our own.
But divine providence is so much more than that. Divine providence is His creating, and directing, the entire order of the universe according to His wisdom and knowledge. Divine providence holds all things in their natures and directs them to their end. By divine providence, the stars shine; by divine providence, the oceans heave; by divine providence, whales are whales. By divine providence Christ was born, Mary is our mother, ICA is here, and I stand before you today. And by divine providence you are graduating. It really is worthwhile to meditate on divine providence. Such a meditation, quite literally, puts all things in their proper context.
Divine providence has placed ICA here for a purpose—to educate you, dear graduates. And what does that mean, to educate you? If I was to fully unpack that, this would be a very long talk indeed. So I will put it in a nutshell—ICA aims to produce prudent men. If you are prudent, you will have responded well to our teaching. ICA also aims to produce contemplative men. If you delight in, and rest in, the truth, you will have responded well to our teaching.
These might seem rather jarring statements. Prudent? We must understand what that means. It does not mean careful. It does not mean slow to act. In current parlance “prudent” even has connotations of shiftiness and pragmatism. But that is just because the world is deeply evil. Prudence, in fact, is the queen of the moral virtues, it is that which makes the other virtues, such as justice, temperance, and courage, virtues at all. Prudence, briefly stated, is right reason in human action. It is acting in accordance with reality.
But what does this look like, in practice? As Josef Pieper puts it, “The Christian is prudent; namely, he does not allow his view on reality to be controlled by the Yes or No of his will, but rather he makes this Yes or No of the will dependent upon the truth of real things.” Thus, the prudent man conforms his will with the truth: he does not act against the truth of reality, he does not act in such a way as to attempt to change the truth to fit his own liking.
Still, this needs clarification. And St. Thomas clarifies. At one point he rather dryly explains that three things are required for prudence: knowledge of principles, knowledge of particulars, and the cleverness to choose the means to the end. This simple enumeration actually reveals truths of tremendous depth. What does “knowledge of principles” mean? On a basic level, knowledge of right and wrong. But also, knowledge of what is noble, knowledge of what the true value of a things is, knowledge of the goodness of things. All of these types of knowledge come to bear in the virtue of prudence. Knowledge of particulars is exactly what it sounds like: knowledge of the circumstances surrounding concrete actions.
Prudence, then, very much requires a clear perception of reality. So, too, does contemplation. For what is contemplation but the knowledge of the truth for its own sake, the quiet vision of truth wherein we delight in and affirm it as both true and good. In contemplation we receive a little fulfillment of our intellectual nature, which desires all truth. This is what ICA intends you to be—both prudent and contemplative. Prudent, to direct your actions well, in accordance with reality, and contemplative, to rest in the truth, to know and love God.
Both prudence and contemplation require knowledge of reality. And it is this knowledge that we have striven to give you year after year. In all your classes, but especially in English, Philosophy, and Religion, we have pointed you towards the truth and coaxed, cajoled, prodded, and guided you so that you might look, see, understand, and affirm. Now that you are graduating, we will not be there for you anymore, or at least not in the same way, and certainly not with such frequency. Now it will be up to you to act in accordance with reality, to direct yourself with prudence. Now it will be up to you to recognize what you are, and to feed the limitless desire for truth that is so deeply rooted in your very nature as intellectual creatures. To do these things, you must know, and to know, you must see and hear.
Christ in the Gospels often repeats some version of an exhortation to seeing and hearing in the form of “he who has eyes to see, let him see,” or “he who has ears to hear, let him hear.” And this is a bit odd for a couple of reasons. One reason is that no one who followed Christ lacked working eyes and ears—because if someone did, Christ fixed them. Christ cured the blind and the deaf quickly, with a word or a touch. So, obviously, everyone listening and seeing should have eyes to see, and ears to hear. Another reason is, of course, that Christ implies that one may see but not see, and hear but not hear. In fact, he states this explicitly, and in an almost impassioned manner, in the Gospel of St. Matthew. When asked by the apostles why He speaks in parables, Christ responds:
If I talk to them in parables, it is because, though they have eyes, they cannot see, and though they have ears, they cannot hear or understand. Indeed, in them the prophecy of Isaias is fulfilled, You will listen and listen, but for you there is no understanding; you will watch and watch, but for you there is no perceiving. The heart of this people has become dull, their ears are slow to listen, and they keep their eyes shut, so that they may never see with those eyes, or hear with those ears, or understand with that heart, and turn back to me, and win healing from me.
And what did Christ want them to see and to hear? Why, Himself, of course, and the truth that He was speaking to them. And it is that truth that we, too, must see and hear. He is not here to speak to us with his corporeal body, but the Church still is. Yet, it is not just the Church that speaks of God, that speaks truth. As King David says in Psalm 19,
See how the skies proclaim God’s glory, how the vault of heaven betrays his craftsmanship! Each day echoes its secret to the next, each night passes on to the next its revelation of knowledge; no word, no accent of theirs that does not make itself heard, till their utterance fills every land, till their message reaches the ends of the world.
The entire world, all of creation, quietly shouts the glory of God and proclaims the truth, if only we can see and hear.
So, how do we see and hear? Well, here is my advice to you, in a form so simple and so familiar that I hope you remember it: Be Quiet!
God speaks to us in silence, and reality speaks to us in silence: our silence. God spoke to Elias not in the storm, or the earthquake, or the fire, but in the gentle breeze. And Elias, who was waiting quietly, listening quietly, heard him. Be quiet. But when I say “be quiet” I do not mean that you should simply “shut up.” The fruitful silence is not simply an absence of noise. Rather, it is a humble attentiveness. It is a hopeful openness to perception. As Josef Pieper puts it,
One who is truly listening is not deadening himself into an unnatural and unintellectual dumbness. His silence is also by no means an empty and dead soundlessness. In this silence there is not only listening but also answering… Thus, the world reveals itself to the silent listener and only to him; the more silently he listens, the more purely he is able to perceive reality.
Silence is important because it is a prerequisite for seeing and hearing; seeing and hearing lead to knowing, and knowing is what we were made to do. We are made in God’s image and likeness, to know the truth, and to love the good, and ultimately, to see Him face to face. Yet seeing Him is not something that we should, at all, put off doing. We should be silent now, so that we can know Him now. And we know Him through knowing the reality of His creation. As St. Thomas says, all of creation exists to imitate the perfection of God. We can know His perfection through knowing His creation.
Yet, the world is full of noise, more now than at any time. The devil loves noise. Hell is full of noise. The devil loves noise because he hates truth, and noise fills the ears, and yes, the eyes, and prevents knowledge of the truth. Noise derails prudence, and shatters contemplation. Noise obscures the good, and glorifies vice. And there is something in our fallen nature that loves noise. Noise is sight and hearing that we enjoy not because by means of them we know, but purely for their own sake. It is what St. Augustine calls the concupiscentia oculis, the concupiscence of the eyes, and it leads to a corruption of the very faculties that make us human.
And noise leads to despair. It leads to the capital vice of acedia, which St. Thomas describes as a form of sorrow—sorrow in the face of spiritual good. A person infected with this vice fears God, and not in a good way. He flees from truth, from spiritual good, as from something that will do him harm. It is terrifying. Reality itself causes him sorrow. Distraction, more noise, is the only way such a one can protect his fragile, stunted self. He distracts himself with work, because work makes him feel important, and when working he does not have to think about terrifying things like God. He distracts himself with entertainment, because he can feel shallowly happy, and not notice the gaping chasm in his being.
A man with acedia cannot be alone with himself. He cannot bear self-reflection. He cannot bear to reflect on reality. He hates to think. He must be constantly distracted. He must either hear noise, or see noise, or make noise.
And the man with acedia is a mocker. He mocks because he fears. He mocks truth because he hates it. He mocks God because, horribly, God causes him sorrow. He mocks so as to triumph over what threatens him. But his triumph is false, and hollow, and profits him nothing, for it only moves him further from his true purpose.
The man with acedia falls into despair, because he is, in reality, not enough for himself, and because the world of noise, work, distraction, and entertainment cannot feed him.
Be quiet.
Be quiet so that you can be the opposite of the man with acedia. Be quiet so that you can reflect upon yourself, and know yourself, and guide yourself. Be quiet so that, if you get married, you can see your wife, and hear your children. Be quiet so that you can be prudent. Be quiet so that you can see the perfection of God in His creation, and rejoice in the goodness and truth of Being.
You are about to graduate, and go off into the “real world,” a term wherein “real” does not denote being, as it does in philosophy, but rather seems to refer to getting and spending. The “real” world is not real. The world as God made it and guides it, is real. The conception of the “real” world is a Protestant notion, not a Catholic one. A Catholic is in the actual real world from the moment of his birth and deeper in it from the moment of his baptism. Under the false conception of the “real” world, our purpose, once we are adults, is apparently to go out and work hard and earn a living. Yes, we go to Mass and say the rosary, but we kind of let God take care of our salvation. Our purpose is to work. How Protestant can you get?
Gentlemen, we must earn our bread by the sweat of our brows as a consequence of the sin of our forefather. Let us not mistake the punishment due to sin with our purpose in life.
It is a good time, at graduation, to reflect on your real purpose. Yes, you will have to work, and sanctify that work, but you were not designed by God to be fulfilled by mere work. Recall, quietly, humbly, and attentively, what you learned as little children from the Baltimore Catechism. “Why did God make you? He made me to know, love, and serve Him in this world, and to be happy with him in the next.” We are made to know, and to love. That is our purpose.
So, be quiet, that you might fulfill this purpose. Have the courage to be quiet. And it does take courage: you will be mocked. Turn off the noise—why do we need music all the time? (If it is music.) Avoid inane talk. Don’t freak out about the news. Turn off the screen. Seek silence, for your soul needs it as your body needs water. Take a walk. Sit and think. Look and listen. Read. Read literature, history, philosophy, and spirituality. Pray, pray, and pray, in silence. Be signs of contradiction to our perverse and noisy age.
And remember, in the trials that you will no doubt find in the filth of the false world, in the noise the devil throws at you, that you are more valuable than many sparrows.
God bless you.
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