The goal of worship and prayer might be described as coming into the presence of God. This does not mean having visions of singing angels, or streets paved with gold. The practice of the presence of God is at once quieter and more serious. It does not take me out of myself, so much as it brings me to a deep and peaceful confidence that God does exist, and that He is present in and to the world, in a mysterious way we cannot fully understand.
Let us consider the words “Our Father” in light of the Syriac tradition. Looking at the New Testament in Syriac provides a fresh perspective and connects us to an ancient dialect of the language spoken by Our Lord.
The first line of the prayer is: Aboun d.baš.ma.yō, “Our Father, who (is) in heaven”
The word Aboun means “Our Father.” John Bennett, a modern mystic, noted that to be a Father is not the same as being a Creator. A father puts something of himself into his children, something that remains part of them. Christ’s emphasis on the Fatherhood of God is one of the most distinctive marks of Christianity.
When we pray Aboun, we are not addressing God as “my Father” but as “our Father”. I am therefore also, in the same breath, declaring myself the brother or sister of all humanity: they are thus included in my prayer, or at least not foreign to it. Can we truly say “Our” while excluding others?
God, our Father, hears our call, but do we hear His? To listen, we need silence, not just an absence of noise but the silence of presence, a stillness that allows us to sense Him. This is a silence filled with purpose, reaching the deepest parts of ourselves, striving to perceive the One beyond words and thought.
Many grasp part of a truth but mistake it for the whole, leading to passing trends in religion. The same has happened with silence. Simply not speaking is not enough. As Ecclesiastes says, there is a time to be silent and a time to speak. True silence, one that bears fruit, must be rooted in the Lord’s words: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matthew 5:8).
The Syriac text reads: Tou.bay.houn lay.lairn dad.Kairn bleb.houn: d.he.noun neH.zoun la.lō.hō. The word for purity here is linked to being cleansed or refined, much like purifying metals or pruning vines. It implies an effort to purify, not mere innocence but a holiness won through struggle.
As children, we often experience God’s presence vividly. But now that we have grown, we cannot, as St Paul said, continue to live in the world of the child. However, it is possible for us to cleanse our hearts, that is, to overcome our vices, our negative emotions, and our weakness, by seeing where we have gone wrong and correcting our courses.
As a child, I was fit and strong. However, after an accident, my back was injured, making even sitting properly a challenge. The strength I had as a child was no longer sufficient; I had to develop an adult’s fitness. I sought professional advice, learned about the body, and applied that knowledge.
Purity is similar. An adult seeking purity does not begin with a child’s innocent heart but with an adult’s experience and knowledge of the world. A child trusts because they cannot imagine deceit, but we know deception, both in others and in ourselves. As God told Cain, sin is crouching at the door, but we must master it.
This mastery of sin through the aim for the holiness of God is one way of thinking about the purity of heart which will enable us to see God, as Our Lord promises. And this now shows us something about the way to a godly silence: it is not enough to merely sit quietly and expect graces to fall into our laps. We have thought and feelings, we must have them. We have duties and obligations, and thus are responsible adults with real and valuable connections to the world in which we live: our family, workplace, society, and God.
The silence we seek is an ordering of all our faculties: mental, emotional, and physical, so that the entire man is at peace because he vigilantly waits in the presence of God. Rather, the silence we seek comes about because my attention is in a part of myself deeper than words, and is seeking contact with He who is above them.
In our case, however, that stillness is animated by divine love, because our Lord is not merely our king, He is also Our Father. We address him as aboun d.baš.ma.yō. “Our Father in heaven.”
