Despite his quietness and the gentleness of his approach – my father is not a weak man.
My father is a very quiet man. He is a man of few words. I remember spending much of my childhood around my father having to lower my voice. This was because my father’s ears were seriously and permanently damaged when he was a young man because he was an engineer. My father’s first job was working on a dredging site and because in that job he was tasked with spending day after day on site with all the heavy and noisy machinery (without any safety equipment like ear plugs) caused his hearing to be seriously impacted.
Because my father’s hearing was seriously impacted by this early work of his, for my entire life I only ever heard my father speak in a quiet voice. And this is likely because he was unable to hear the sound of his own voice and would experience ringing in his ears, and this ringing is an annoyance and distraction for him and prevents him from hearing properly.
Now, because my father is a very quiet man, one would be mistaken for thinking that he is somehow weak. After all, my father is probably not the person who you would hear speaking the most at a party. His voice is not the loudest in the room. And if you would like to hear his opinion, you will need to ask for it explicitly and then wait to hear what he has to say.
And yet – despite his quietness and the gentleness of his approach – my father is not a weak man.
And as I have been thinking about the quiet strength of my father, I have also been thinking about the quiet strength of another who is far more powerful than one could ever imagine… I have been thinking about the quiet strength of God.
On the night before He died, God Himself sat quietly at a table. He ate a meal with His disciples – even the ones who would betray Him. And He did not reprimand them. He did not berate them. He did not fill them with fear and worry. He calmly and quietly ate His meal and served them in theirs. There was no heightened emotion or terrible panic. There was only terrible suffering at the burden that my sins had placed upon Him.
And knowing what would happen and how things would be, and understanding the terrible weight of sin that He would endure on His Divine and Human Soul, and feeling the separation from the Holy Trinity in that darkest of night, God the Son, sat quietly and ate a meal.
And in that meal, He quietly gave Himself to us in the form of the Most Holy Eucharist. And in that tiny wafer of bread and sip of wine, the God who is the most powerful being in the universe, made Himself small and quiet for me. And today, as I reflect on the sacrifices of the Blessed God Himself, I have to stop and wonder… After all, just because my God is quiet and gentle, it does not mean – in any way – that He is weak…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.