Fr. Michael McCullagh, CM reflects on the silence of Catherine Laboure.
Some excerpts…
In the silence of sleep and dreams, St. Catherine Labouré experienced visions and from those visions came sounds or voices which have enriched our Vincentian Family and the Church since the mid-19th century. Today, I would like to share with you those sounds of silence, the sounds of contemplative silence which have enriched us all.
The first sound of contemplative silence for St. Catherine Labouré was the sound of presence, a tangible, communicating presence of the Eucharistic Lord at her First Holy Communion and, later, during daily Mass, a sound which replaced the numbing sound of loneliness in the death of her mother, and the feeling of isolation as a visionary, in her community life.
The next sounds for Catherine were actual human voices, the voice of St. Vincent telling her in her dream to follow him in ministering to the poor, and the voice of Mary, the conversational voice, the voice of reassurance for the Double Family of Vincent and for the world.
He concludes
Today, we need to hear new sounds, new voices in a milieu of contemplative silence. “Too much do we ask for what we want; and not enough for what the good Lord wants,” Catherine once said to a companion. Today we have an opportunity to listen to the many voices of Catherine, voices of serenity when community life is trying, voices of presence in prayer, and voices of hope and reassurance in the midst of dwindling numbers. In our gathering, our prayer will be that we might hear these voices in the places and spaces which, for Catherine, were places and spaces of contemplative silence.
For St. Vincent every resolution was to be single, precise, definite and possible. He would say of Louise that, whenever she found herself alone, she was in contemplative prayer. Vincent might simply be asking us to take such a resolution — be people of contemplative silence every time we are alone.
In this Chapel of the Apparitions may we be sustained and strengthened by the sounds which become contemplative silence.
