Meister Eckart typically said that ‘there is nothing so much like God as silence.’ Mother Teresa, who insisted on the centrality of two hours of silent prayer for the life of her apostolic sisters, typically said that ‘silence is God speaking to us.’ Each of these sayings illustrates a way of understanding the meaning of silence.

Why is God so like silence? Eckart doesn't say God likes silence or likes silent worshippers but that God is like silence. St Benedict has two words we translate as silence: quies and silentium. Quies is quiet, physical silence, an absence of noise – not banging doors, not scraping chairs, not coughing or unwrapping sweet papers. It is the quies we expect good parents to train their children in, a physical self-restraint and modesty that respects the presence of other people. Quies makes the world habitable and civil. It is often grossly lacking in urban modern culture where music invades elevators and there is rarely a moment or place where we are not in range of manmade noise. There are now expensive headphones that people wear, not to listen to music but to block out noise. Silentium, however, is not an absence of noise but a state of mind and an attitude of consciousness turned towards others or to God. It is attention. When someone comes to see a priest or counselor to share a problem or grief, the priest knows that what he must above all give is his attention. There may not be a solution to the problem and most of our hopefully helpful words glide off the back of grief as failed platitudes. To listen deeply, to give oneself in the act of attention is in fact not to judge, or fix or condemn but to love. Seen this way there is indeed nothing so much like God as silence because God is love.

In the book Faith of the Fatherless, psychologist Paul Vitz definitively links fatherlessness to atheism. He profiles dozens of prominent atheists, from Nietzsche to Dawkins, and finds an amazing but unsurprising pattern: "In no case [with the atheists] do we find a strong, beloved father with a close relationship with his son or daughter." What's also made clear in the book is that fatherlessness has a greater influence on predisposing boys to outright atheism than it does girls.

Mentorship Make the Difference Too

A boy becomes an adult male by biology, but he can only walk into secure manhood with the direction and affirmation of secure men.

"Bother your pastors, disturb your pastors, all of us pastors, so that we will give you the milk of grace, of doctrine, and of guidance." Departing from his prepared remarks, Pope Francis on Sunday called on the faithful knock at the doors of their pastors "and on their hearts," saying it would help Bishops and priests be good pastors.

The Holy Father made his remarks to the pilgrims gathered in Saint Peter's Square for the weekly Regina Caeli prayer. His remarks focused on the image of Jesus the Good Shepherd, taken from the day's Gospel reading. Many people are proposed to us as shepherds or pastors for our daily lives, he said. "But only the risen Christ is the true Shepherd, who gives us life in abundance." Jesus not only guides us, but accompanies us on our journey "He walks with us." Pope Francis called on us to "listen with open minds and hearts to His Word, in order to feed our faith, illuminate our consciences" and allow us "to follow the teachings of the Gospel."

In "William Kurelek: painter and prophet" Michael O'Brien brings to life a great artist whose work embodies his passionate faith as it was lived out in an agonizing struggle waged against the forces of disintegration both within himself and in modern society. This book is a unique achievement by a writer who shares both Kurelek's faith and his vocation.

"Michael O'Brien explodes old caricatures and intelligently articulates the theological nuance and empathy that lay at the heart of William Kurelek's moral and artistic worldview.