{"id":13402,"date":"2013-09-09T01:01:02","date_gmt":"2013-09-09T05:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/?p=13402"},"modified":"2013-09-09T08:13:59","modified_gmt":"2013-09-09T12:13:59","slug":"priest-affirms-without-silence-and-solitude-there-is-no-encounter-with-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/2013\/09\/09\/priest-affirms-without-silence-and-solitude-there-is-no-encounter-with-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Priest Affirms: Without Silence and Solitude There Is No Encounter With God"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Fr. Paulo Ricardo Azevedo, Jr. photo: cn archives<\/p><\/div>\n

The encounter with God is not possible if we do not silence ourselves, for if God speaks to us, we need to be ready to hear.” Is what Fr. Paulo Ricardo Azevedo, Jr priest of the Archdiocese of Cuiab\u00e1 in Brazil advocates, this month in which the Holy Father reminds Catholics on the value of silence.<\/p>\n

This is one of prayer intentions of Pope Francis in the month of September. The Church joined with the Pontiff, asks God that men and women of this time “so many times immersed in the frenetic rhythm of life, may rediscover the value of silence and know to listen to God and their brothers and sisters.”<\/p>\n

Amidst the current of modern life, it is common to perceive the small number of those that seek to get this meeting and with God. In this sense, Fr. Paul stressed the reality of those that, even without realizing it fear silence or solitude and therefore have also the need to be always connected to something or someone.<\/p>\n

“The people that do not support silence because in truth it does not support them. They feel attacked by silence, because it obliges us to encounter ourselves,” explained the priest.<\/p>\n

Silence: Door to encounter with God<\/p>\n

For the priest, the encounter of the individual with himself is the door that gives access to “Jesus, Life and Truth.” It is the door in which I open myself to the Above, opening me to the inside to encounter with myself,” he said.<\/p>\n

Therefore, according to him, silence is fundamental in the spiritual life, in the encounter with God that is the Word. Without silence, there is no encounter with oneself, nor with God. In this case, the spiritual life cannot develop.<\/p>\n

It is possible to promote this type of encounter at every moment, the priest said. “If I encounter myself, I am collecting myself, even though there may be noise all around me.” However, he stressed, “it is necessary also to give myself a space for silence and solitude that I would say is a quasi hygienic habit. The people need also to have the habit of having a moment of recollection, with God.”<\/p>\n

Silence and Solitude<\/p>\n

This silence is the door to the encounter, it is tied to solitude, according to the priest. It is not treated as a depressive isolation, but a type of solitude that provides contact with God, with oneself and with the other.<\/p>\n

In the opinion of Father Paulo, people live agitated, surrounded by noise and experience superficial commonplace encounters. There is no heart to heart encounter,” he affirmed. The profound encounters, according to the priest, happen when two solitudes encounter themselves.<\/p>\n

“For the people that meet another person, my loneliness must encounter your loneliness, or maybe, I need as person to encounter someone that I know is another person that is not going to satisfy completely my thirst for happiness. There are two solitudes that meet. This is the only possible encounter,” he explained.<\/p>\n

However, the only encounter capable of producing full happiness is the encounter with God. “The encounter with God is different in the sense that it is He that seeks to satisfy this solitude, but he will do this fully in heaven. In the life of prayer, solitude and the silence are joined, for these are the conditions to encounter myself and God” he said.<\/p>\n

The Church and the Value of Silence<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the diverse religious traditions \u00a0of the Catholic Church, “solitude and silence constitute privileged spaces to help people encounter themselves and that Truth that give meaning to all \u00a0things.” This affirmation is from Pope emeritus Benedict XVI, in his message for 46th World Day of Social Communication.<\/p>\n

For the bishop emeritus of Rome, it is necessary to create a propitiousatmosphere, almost a type of “ecosystem” capable of balancing silence, word, images and sounds. He also affirmed in the message that silence is the channel of communication between God and man and man with God.<\/p>\n

“We have the need of that silence that it becomes contemplation, that makes us enter into the silence of God and thus arrives at the point where the Word is born, the Redemptive word” the Pope wrote.<\/p>\n

Translated from Portuguese<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The encounter with God is not possible if we do not silence ourselves, for if God speaks to us, we need to be ready to hear.” Is what Fr. Paulo Ricardo Azevedo, Jr priest of the Archdiocese of Cuiab\u00e1 in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25555,25556],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13402"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13402"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13414,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13402\/revisions\/13414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cancaonova.com\/catholicismanew\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}