The Silent Stable: Preparing the Soul for the Incarnation (S11, EP01)

Is silence just empty space, or is it something more?

In our modern world, we often view silence as a vacuum—an absence of noise. But true spiritual silence is actually a form of active receptivity. Just as you must be silent to truly hear a friend or imagine a story while reading, you must cultivate interior silence to perceive the reality of God. In the hustle of the holiday season, it is easy to miss the Incarnation if we are not prepared to listen.

In this week’s episode of Midnight Carmelite, we explore how to prepare for the feast of the Incarnation. We look to the Nativity story—where Christ was born into a silence that only the shepherds and Magi noticed—as our guide. We also discuss the practical tool of mortification. Far from being a negative practice, we frame mortification as the "shovel" used to clear the stable of our hearts, while our good deeds become the straw that cushions the manger for the Christ Child.

In this episode, you will learn:

• The definition of Active Receptivity: Why silence is not a void, but a necessary state of listening for God’s disclosure.
• Lessons from the Nativity: How the humility of the shepherds and Magi allowed them to notice what the rest of the world missed.
• The "Shovel" and the "Straw": A practical metaphor for using mortification to remove worldly attachments and good deeds to welcome the Lord.
• Practical Advent Steps: How to replace distractions (like excessive shopping) with ten minutes of Scripture and silence.

TRANSCRIPT

Defining Silence as Active Receptivity

Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of Midnight Carmelite. This week, we are going to be talking about silence as the prerequisite for preparing you for the Incarnation—that is, the feast of the Incarnation of our Lord, Christmas. Silence is one of the key components of the Advent season. So, let's talk about silence, and then we will discuss the tools we can use to create silence in our lives. First, silence is not simply a vacuum or empty space. Silence is the absence of something for the sake of the presence of something else.

What do I mean by that? For example, if I am listening in a conversation, there is silence on my part. If I am talking to a friend and the friend is speaking, I see their mouth moving and hear the sound. Why do I hear the sound? Because I am not speaking; I am silent while listening. So again, it is not a vacuum. It is a receptivity—active receptivity, I would even say—to the speech of another person or to the disclosure, revealing, or manifestation of something. If I read silently, my eyes pass over words on the page, and I understand through sight and intellect what reality the author is trying to talk about. It is similar to reading fantasy novels like Lord of the Rings; you are imagining Middle Earth as you read. Silence addresses this positive receptivity, listening, and allowing something to manifest its nature to you.

Silence and the Nativity

In our day and age, as I've been saying in recent episodes, we expect big things to happen. We think it has to be a grand event. I don't subscribe to that. While big things do happen, I think the small things are frankly more important overall. Why am I saying that? In the season of Advent, a baby was born in Bethlehem silently in a cave and put in a manger. No one heard except a few people. Obviously, the shepherds heard from the angels, but generally, the child cried and, as John says, He was born into the world He created, but no one knew Him. That is what silence is. Only Mary, Joseph, the Magi, and the shepherds knew.

The shepherds were attending to their duties; they were positively receptive by virtue of being attendant to their sheep. Bishop Sheen says that the shepherds are those who know they know nothing, and the Magi are those who know they don't know everything. I think that is another good thing about silence. Today, when we speak colloquially, we often feel we have to have something to say or share. However, silence is really that listening—allowing someone or something to manifest itself to you. Silence is obviously super important for the Incarnation: to see the Christ Child and to hear Christ speaking to you.

Mortification: The Tool for Silence

How do we get there? What tool can we use to achieve this? That tool is mortification. To follow the Advent metaphor here, mortification is like a shovel that we use to clear the manure out of the stable so that the King of Kings has a place to lay His head. Our good deeds are the little pieces of straw that go into that bed we lay Him in over Advent. Our conscious practicing of the virtues creates the cushion for Him when He arrives. We have an advantage in this case because we know that He is coming.

Practical Steps for Advent

What does this all mean for how we are supposed to deal with this season? First of all, try over the next two weeks to make some silence. It doesn't have to be long, but make silence for God, for Christ, and for the Incarnation. To get that silence, this is where mortification comes in. This might be challenging, but I am going to say it anyway: I can guarantee there are things you are planning to do over the Advent season—or that your family is dragging you into—that you do not need to do. These are attachments stopping you from experiencing the reason for the season, which is Jesus Christ in His Incarnation.

You have to identify something to mortify or not do. For example, maybe you are shopping a lot, telling yourself, "I need to get this." Maybe instead of spending that time on Amazon, say, "I'm going to take ten minutes and spend it with God." If you have trouble concentrating when you do that, open Scripture, especially the Gospels for this period, or the Old Testament. You could even go to the liturgical readings for Advent, such as Isaiah. Whatever you do, do it because this season is very important to prepare yourself for His coming and the beginning of the liturgical year. That's all for now, and I'll see you next time.