Are you awake?

I will cry unto God with my voice; even unto God will I cry with my voice, and he shall hearken unto me. 

In the time of my trouble I sought the Lord; my sore ran, and ceased not in the night-season; my soul refused comfort. 

When I am in heaviness, I will think upon God; when my heart is vexed, I will complain. 

Thou holdest mine eyes waking; I am so feeble that I cannot speak. 

Ps 77:1-4 (Coverdale)

One of the most important lessons I learned during my training as a combat medic in the Army Reserve was triage. In casualty evacuation exercises we were taught to prioritise not the people who were shouting and screaming about their injuries, but the quiet ones who didn't draw any attention to themselves. The reason is quite simple. If you're strong enough to shout, you're doing better than someone who isn't.

In Advent, the church focuses on Saint John the Baptist. Saint Augustine called him the “voice” of the Word of God. And therein lies a certain irony. The Word of God was born a baby, unable to speak. He was born among dumb animals. The first 30 years of his life, we hear nothing from his mouth except one incident when he was 12 years old in the temple. And yet, even while both were still in the womb, tradition has it that St John “leapt” within, as a sign that he recognised his cousin’s divine presence. To this, the foetal Jesus remained silent, even as he would be silent as an adult some three decades later before his executioner, Pilate. It is as though the Word of God is reluctant to speak, and when he does, it is often under the cover of parables.

Yet Christ's message for us at advent is consistent and clear: be alert, watch and wake. The language of wakefulness has in recent years been adopted by those who sometimes call themselves “woke.” Broadly speaking, this is a reapplication of the Marxist idea of conscientisation of difference in class and wealth, to differences of race and sex.

Without doubt, voices which were once silenced are now being heard. But there is a danger that the loudness of those voice drowns out the needs of those who have no voice. In particular, there is a danger that the shouting of young adult voices silences the voices of the unborn, of children, and of the elderly, especially the senile and terminally ill, whose right even just to live the rest of their lives is increasingly questioned. The Church needs to be particularly awake and attuned to the voices that nobody else is interested in hearing.

As the prophet Elijah and countless others have found, the medium of God’s most intimate and powerful communications with us is often silence, the “still small voice of calm.” The voiceless Word was born in Bethlehem, which literally means “House of Bread.” So let us awaken to His voice this Advent in the silent things of this world: in silenced souls, in the silent song of sea, sky and stone, in the silent love that moves the stars, and above all, in the silent bread of the altar through which all things are hallowed and offered to their Maker.