RonRolheiser,OMI

The Place of Silence

February 9, 2026

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Many of us could use more silence in our lives. I say this cautiously because the place of silence in our lives isn’t easy to specify.

Silence is a complex; sometimes we fear it and try to avoid it and sometimes when we are tired and over-stimulated we positively long for it.

Generally, though, we have too little of it in our lives. Work, cellphones, conversation, entertainment, news, distraction, and preoccupations of every kind tend to fill up every waking minute. We have become so used to being stimulated by words, information, and distraction that we often feel lost and restless when we find ourselves alone, without someone to talk to, something to watch, something to read, or something to do to take up our attention.

Not all of this is bad, mind you. In the past, spiritual writers were generally too one-sided in extolling the virtues of silence. They tended to give the too simple impression that God and spiritual depth were only found in silence, as if the virtues of ordinary work, conversation, celebration, family, and community were somehow second-rate spiritually.

In speaking of the place of silence, former spiritualities generally penalized extroverts and let introverts off too easily. In brief, they didn’t sufficiently take into account that all of us, extroverts and introverts alike, need the therapy of a public life. While we need silence for depth, we need interaction with others for grounding and sanity. Certain inner work can only be done in silence, but a certain grounding of our sanity depends on interaction with others. Silence can also be an escape, an avoidance of the stinging purification that often can happen only through the challenge of interacting within a family and a community.

Moreover, silence is not always the best way to deal with heartaches and obsessions. Ultimately, this is a form of overconcentration. Sometimes when a heartache is threatening our sanity, the best thing we can do is not go to the chapel but rather to the theatre or to a meal with a friend. Preoccupation with work or a healthy distraction can sometimes be just the friend you need when your heart is fighting asphyxiation.

There’s a story about the famous philosopher Hegel. Immediately after finishing his monumental work on the phenomenology of history, he realized that he was on the edge of a major breakdown because of the intensity of his concentration over so long a period. What did he do to break out of this? Go on a silent retreat? No. He went to the opera every night, dined every day with friends, and sought out every kind of distraction until, after a while, the strangling grip of his inner world finally let go and the sunshine and freshness of everyday life broke through again. Sometimes distraction, not silence, is our best cure, even spiritually.

Still, there’s a need for silence. What the great spiritual writers of all ages tried to teach on this subject can perhaps be captured in a single line from Meister Eckhart: Nothing resembles the language of God as much as silence.

In essence, Eckhart is saying that silence is a privileged entry into the divine realm. There’s a huge silence inside each of us that beckons us into itself and can help us learn the language of heaven. What’s meant by this?

Silence is a language that’s deeper, more far-reaching, more understanding, more compassionate, and more eternal than any other language. In heaven, it seems, there will be no languages, no words. Silence will speak. We will wholly, intimately, and ecstatically understand each other and hold each other in silence. Ironically, for all their importance, words are part of the reason we can’t fully do this already. Words unite but they also divide. There’s a deeper connection available in silence.

 Lovers already know this, as do the Quakers whose liturgy tries to imitate the silence of heaven, and as do those who practice contemplative prayer. John of the Cross expresses this in a wonderfully cryptic line: “Learn to understand more by not understanding than by understanding.”

Silence can speak louder than words, and more deeply. We experience this already in different ways: when we are separated by distance or death from loved ones, we can still be with them in silence; when we are divided from other sincere persons through misunderstanding, silence can provide the place where we can be together; when we stand helpless before another’s suffering, silence can be the best way of expressing our empathy; and when we have sinned and have no words to restore things to their previous wholeness, in silence a deeper word can speak and let us know that, in the end, all will be well and every manner of being will be well.

Nothing resembles the language of God as much as silence. It’s the language of heaven, already deep inside of us, beckoning us, inviting us into deeper intimacy with everything, even as we still need the therapy of a public life.

John Allen RIP

February 2, 2026

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The renowned anthropologist Mircea Eliade once issued this warning: No community should botch its deaths. He’s right. Death washes clean and only after someone is gone can we fully drink in the gift that he or she was for us and the world.

On January 22nd the Christian community, and the Catholic Church in particular, lost someone who had been a gift to us for a long time. John Allen, the editor-in-chief of Crux, died in Rome at the age of 61. He had been battling cancer since 2022.

John Allen was one of the most prominent (and important) English journalists commenting on religious issues, particularly on ecclesial issues and the shifting demographics of religion in the world. He worked out of Rome as a Vatican correspondent and out of the USA as editor-in-chief of a news site that helped keep us abreast of what was happening religiously in the world.

A number of things made John stand out as a journalist. He had a talent for having his finger on the pulse of things, not just in what was happening in the churches, but also what (in his words) were the mega-trends in the world. For those of us who didn’t have time to scan the news every day and read the numerous articles in religious magazines and websites – well we could read John Allen.

But, even more important than his talent for having his finger on the pulse of things was his always fair-minded, balanced commentary. John Allen did not fall into either of the current ecclesial categories of liberal or conservative. He was both, and neither. He was comfortable in both liberal and conservative gatherings, comfortable with Popes John Paul II and Benedict and with Francis and Leo. He had devotees and critics on both sides of the ecclesial spectrum. That speaks well of him. If I may use a time-worn cliché, he was too conservative for some liberals and too liberal for some conservatives. He didn’t have a full home with either of them, even as he was at home with both. Moreover, he was never accused of being unfair, even by those who disagreed with him.

Then, beyond the journalist, there was John Allen the man, the friend, the one who forever brought lightness, warmth and humor into the circle. I was privileged to get to know him (and his favorite restaurants) during my years on our General Council in Rome. He befriended our Oblate community and we befriended him. Our friendship continued after my return to Canada and the USA and John accepted invitations to speak at various symposia and conferences at our school and at other Oblate sponsored events.

And he was always memorable, not just for his solid content, but also for his color and humor. He would introduce himself to the audience by sharing that he came from Hill City, Kansas, where, in his words, “there is no hill, and sure as hell no city!” The local bar there, he said, had a sign in the men’s restroom: Please don’t gut your ducks in the sink! He carried that earthiness into his presentations and no one ever left wondering what exactly he was talking about. He didn’t only bring balance and fairness, he also brought color, humor, and wit.

John carried that into his life in general: insight, balance, and color. My image of John is this: a cigarette in hand, a drink in front of him, sitting with a group who are holding forth on every kind of issue, with John providing colorful banter along with keen insights from his wide world experience. I remember a story he shared at just this kind of gathering, about how he was with his family inside a mall in Minneapolis when his phone rang. He looked at the number and then told his family he needed to step outside to take this call. It was Pope Benedict. How do you tell your family in a shopping mall in Minneapolis that you just had a phone call from the pope?

As Eliade says, no community should botch its deaths. In his discourse at the Last Supper in John’s Gospel, Jesus repeatedly tells his disciples that they will only be able to receive his spirit after he dies. Like Eliade, he is warning them not to botch his death. They didn’t.

After his death, his first disciples, for all their misunderstanding and infidelities while he was alive, didn’t botch his death. In the light of his death, they were able to grasp, fully for the first time, his person and his message.

We lost a giant in John Allen and we shouldn’t botch his death.

We need to drink in his spirit so that, among other things, we might be more fair-minded, not fall into any one-sided ecclesial ideology, and always bring warmth and wit into a room.

John Allen, RIP, you were always the good Hill City man who was far too sensible to ever gut your ducks in the sink.

The Meek Are No Longer Inheriting the Earth

January 26, 2026

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It is becoming ever more acceptable today, whether in politics or in general discourse, to speak of brute human strength, force, and power as being the forces we need to guide our lives. Indeed, empathy is now sometimes named explicitly as a weakness.

It is one thing for people to say that strength, force, and power are in fact what govern the world, but it is dangerously wrong to try to throw a Christian cloak over this. In brief, this is the antithesis of Jesus, as the Gospels make clear.

Here’s how the Gospels define strength and weakness.

For centuries the chosen people, feeling oppressed, longed and prayed for a Messiah from God who would come brandishing intimidating muscle, would vanquish their enemies, bring them prosperity, and bind them together in community by a strength, force, and power that was superhuman. But that’s not what they got.

Against every one of their expectations, when their hopes and prayers were finally answered, their longed-for Messiah appeared, not as a superhuman, but as a helpless baby unable to feed himself, helpless to nurture himself into adulthood.

Granted, as an adult he performed miracles and sometimes displayed a strength and power that was supernatural. However, the power he displayed in his miracles was never political, militaristic, or physically intimidating. His miracles were always displays of God’s compassion and fidelity.

There’s an interesting play of words in the Gospels when they speak of “power” or “authority”. They use three different Greek words: Sometimes they refer to power as Energia – the type of power a star athlete can bring to a playing field; and sometimes power is referred to as Dynamis – the type of power a rock star can bring to a stage. However, whenever the Gospels refer to Jesus as powerful or as having authority, they never use these words. Instead, they use the word Exousia (for which we have no English equivalent), though we do have a concept of it.

Exousia is the paradoxical power a baby brings into a room. On the surface, it looks like powerlessness, but ultimately it’s the greatest power of all – vulnerability, the moral power to create intimacy.

Simply put, if you put three people into a room: an athlete in the prime of his physical prowess, a rock star who can electrify a stadium with energy, and a baby. Who ultimately has the most power? Jesus answers that.

We see this clearly in the manner of his death. As he hangs on the cross, suffering and humiliated, he is being taunted, if you are the son of God, come down off that cross! If you have divine power, show it!  Jesus doesn’t take the bait. Instead of demonstrating the kind of power we like to believe God should be using, Jesus instead resorts to another power, a higher one. In his powerlessness, he gives over his spirit in love and empathy and, in that, shows us the place where intimacy is born.

Moreover, Jesus could not be clearer in his teaching. As he makes clear in the Sermon on the Mount (perhaps the greatest moral code ever written) human strength, force, and power are not what bring about the kingdom. What creates community and intimacy among us?

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5, 3-11)

Unfortunately, today in our politics and in our civil discourse (which sadly often lacks civility) people are increasingly putting their faith in brute human power – political power, economic power, military power, social media power, historical privilege. These, as many politicians now claim, are what’s real. They decide things in the world. It’s the strong, the powerful, and the rich who will inherit the good things of this earth. Those who are poor in spirit, who mourn, who are meek, who are merciful, and who are persecuted, will miss out on life. And, undergirding this is the belief that empathy is a weakness.

What’s to be said in the face of this? What should be the Christian response?

Since the beginning of human life on this planet, brute strength and power have always made themselves felt and have often been a dominant force in shaping history.  The meek haven’t always inherited the earth (at least not this earth). And, today the meek are being threatened from all sides. However, whatever its political or economic expediency, this kind of raw strength and power may not cloak itself with Jesus and the Gospels. It is the antithesis of Jesus and the Gospels.

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