By Toan Ho
The night has come down with a lot of contemplation, with a life filled with crowds, with deep sadness that you cannot share. Sometimes, we need silence in our lives. A silence to relieve the sadness of our life, to look back on our life or simply to find something for ourselves.
The road of our life is like a straight line: the line of a career; the line of the family; children and so on. When they intersect, they create an intersection, and the intersection becomes the crossroads. Sometimes we have straight lines and sometimes we find ourselves at the crossroads. So, it is a cycle that we cannot find the way out of. The cycle makes us feel helpless. Our modern life seems to be changing. All things seem to be arranged.
Melbourne seminarian Toan Ho on his recent annual Retreat at Pallotti College in Millgrove.
In the midst of the bustle of life, sometimes we need some time to live slowly, to look back on what has passed, what is coming and also look to the future. Sometimes in a song, it has exciting moments. The song might also have a silent moment to get our attention. It is the same in our life; silence helps us to recognise many things that we could not see with our own eyes.
The life of Jesus is the same. Although he is busy in his daily job, he also needs a silent place. A silent place to pray. He spends his “golden time” to pray with the Father. Jesus spends the time of prayer in the evening on the mountain (Mt 14:23). He prays earnestly. However, he does not forget us in difficult times of life. He is always with us. He is ready to bless us and help when we call him. Although sometimes we doubt his love like Peter: “O man of little faith” (Mt 14:31). We believe in the power of the Lord when he does the wonders and miracles, but we do not believe his love, we think he does these things because they are an obvious thing that he must do. Sometimes, our trust is just the trust of profit. We believe in God when we are falling in the struggles and difficult times of our life – the time that the storm of our life is against us. Our life is created with many choices. Some cases are easy to distinguish between black and white. But sometimes we wonder what is better and what it is that God wants for our life.
Toan Ho takes a moment to ponder and reflect while on his recent Retreat.
We meet God in silence with the freedom of our soul; we have the opportunity to receive light from above. If we do God’s will, our life will be happy and at peace. God wants to reveal to us his intentions, but he asks us to seek it.
The life of today is so noisy and busy. But perhaps we should give ourselves a silent moment to stop walking on the road that we are going. A silence to hear our heart speaks, to hear the voice of our God who is speaking with us every day, a voice which sometimes we cannot hear. A quiet moment that we are waiting for time to stop. A moment for love and to hold that love.
