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Pope to Catholics: Make time for silent prayer in Lent
By Cindy Wooden
Source: Catholic News Service
Published: Monday, March 09, 2009

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VATICAN CITY (CNS)—The day after ending his Lenten retreat—and spending most of the week, including mealtimes, in silence—Pope Benedict XVI encouraged all Catholics to make time in Lent for silent reflection on the Scriptures.

"During this Lenten time, I urge you all to find prolonged moments of silence, possibly of retreat, in order to review your lives in the light of the loving plan of our heavenly Father," the pope said March 8.

Reciting the Angelus with visitors in St. Peter's Square, Pope Benedict said prayer was at the heart of the day's Gospel story about Jesus' transfiguration.

"Prayer, in fact, reaches its culmination and, therefore, becomes a source of interior light when the human spirit adheres to God's spirit and their wills fuse, becoming almost one," the pope said.

Pope Benedict told the crowd gathered in the springtime sun that his Feb. 28-March 7 retreat, directed by Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze, retired head of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, was an intense week of silence and prayer.

Along with his closest aides, the pope said he was able to dedicate his mind and heart "entirely to God, to listening to his word (and) to meditating on the mysteries of Christ."

At the close of the retreat March 7, the pope thanked Cardinal Arinze for guiding their meditations on the theme "The priest encounters Christ and follows him."

"You did not offer us theological acrobatics, but a healthy doctrine, the good bread of our faith," the pope told the cardinal in remarks released by the Vatican.

"Your theology, as you told us, is not an abstract theology, but is marked by a healthy realism," the pope told him.

Cardinal Arinze told Vatican Radio that afternoon that "seeing everyone meditating, praying, with Jesus in the center, eucharistic adoration every day and individual time for everyone—in complete silence—was edifying and very positive for the Church."

The cardinal said he tried to explore with the retreat participants the fact that Jesus is known and discovered only by meeting him in the Church, the sacraments, the Scriptures and in people who are suffering and people crying out for justice, peace and solidarity.

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