The only noise was the humming of an air conditioning unit in the background and the thoughts that formed quietly in my head.

Uncomfortable? It can be, especially at first.

Revealing?  Without a doubt.  

When you turn within yourself and attempt to quiet the thoughts that race incessantly in your mind, the project that you need to finish for your new job, the health issue your older daughter is dealing with, your younger daughter going off to college soon, mortgage payments, car payments, school tuitions, among many other things, it can be discomforting. It can be taxing. It can seem overwhelming.

We are so used to the noise, the racing thoughts, the constant distractions, the breakneck pace in which we live, that dealing with silence and quieting our mind can be a challenge for many people.  But it’s desperately needed. If anything for our mental sanity! 

A priest once said that the things that keep us up at night, the things that hijack our dreams, are the things that separate us from God.

I can see that. Fear and anxiety are a lack of trust in God and preoccupation with the small stuff blocks us from getting close to the Lord and thus, to inner peace.  They are like gongs that shatter the stillness that I was trying to immerse myself in. 

But, in the echoes of the silence that enveloped me and the distractions that broke my inner peace, God began to draw me in. Prayer slowly started formulating in my brain shifting my focus from my own turmoil to Him. Things started getting clearer. As I glanced at a Crucifix not far from where I was sitting, the vision of Christ reverberated in my soul.  

God would help me excel in my new job. God would give my daughter the faith and strength she needed. God would watch over my younger daughter so that she would not let the culture change who she is. And soon, I felt a sense of solace, a sense of comfort and finally, a sense of peace.  The peace I had been searching for.

It’s the kind of peace the world can't offer. It’s a peace that comes from entrusting your every being; heart, mind, and soul to the One who made you, who loves you, who knows you better than you know yourself and who will never let you down. That is the peace we can spend a lifetime searching for and never find. Until we turn to God.    

Some people at work were perplexed when I mentioned I was going on a silent retreat. Silence is not something most people find comforting. Let’s face it, we live in a noise-filled world. If we’re not on our smart phones, we’re on social media, watching TV, listening to music, the car radio, podcasts, or countless other ways of, as author Neil Postman once wrote in his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death. 

We don’t give ourselves time to think, much less talk to God in the innermost recesses of our souls. Therefore, thinking about spending time alone with our thoughts can be unnerving. But that’s exactly why we do it; to get out of our comfort zones.

Pope Benedict XVI once wrote, “The world offers you comfort. But you are not made for comfort. You are made for greatness.”

We all seek happiness. Many of us try to find it with what St. Thomas Aquinas called the four substitutes for happiness; money, power, fame, and pleasure. Yet, they are never enough. Just ask the millionaire who, after making his first million, wants two million. Or the famous actor, who despite all the fame and glory turns to drugs. We’ll always want more because we were made for more.  We have a God-size hole in our souls that can only be filled by God.

St. Augustine once wrote, “Oh God, thou hast made us for Thyself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”  Or, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, “The desire for God is written in the human heart… And only in God will we find the truth and happiness, we never stop searching for.”

I know from personal experience because it is my story and that of so many of the people, I call friends.

Mother Theresa once said, “The fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service, and the fruit of service is peace.”

We all seek peace and peace begins with silence. Keeping that peace may be a fleeting proposition but I can always find it by returning to the silence and focusing on the vision of the Crucifix that reverberated within my soul, as Simon and Garfunkel once sang, “And the vision that was planted in my brain still remains within the sound of silence” …