Resisting the Prowling Lion – 40 Days with Screwtape

Day 31 – Wednesday after 5th Sunday of Lent

To Read:

From The Screwtape Letters:

Screwtape, a senior demon, is offering advice to Wormwood his nephew, an apprentice demon.  The language he uses is ‘upside down’ referring to God as ‘the Enemy’ and the devil as ‘Our Father Below’.

MY DEAR WORMWOOD

Music and silence – how I detest them both!   How thankful we should be that ever since our Father entered Hell – though longer ago than humans, reckoning in light years, could express – no square inch of infernal space and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise – Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile – Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples, and impossible desires.   We will make the whole universe a noise in the end.   We have already made great strides in this direction as regards the Earth.   The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end.   But I admit we are not yet loud enough, or anything like it.

Your affectionate uncle


SCREWTAPE

To Reflect:

Sister Stella-Mary OHP, sometime sister in charge of St Benedict’s House in Johannesburg, once commented, as she caught me whistling in the cloisters, that I was not really made for the contemplative’s life of silence.  I suspect she was probably correct 

Not that I do not enjoy silence – there are times (especially when on Holy Island or the Isle of Bute) that I run to it and hide within it, but I also enjoy music a great deal.   These two poles of life, music and silence, are understandably detested by Screwtape.  Both are ways in which we hear the love song of The Beloved.

Silence is not simply an absence of sound; it is full of the richness of the soul turning towards God.  Some words from the excellent TV programme ‘Call the Midwife’ demonstrate this.   The nuns and nurses at Nonnatus House are stitching together knitted wool squares to make a blanket as a comforter for one of their number who is dangerously ill:

‘Throughout that endless day and night as we waited for news that didn’t come.  It seemed we had never been closer, never more subsumed into a single task.  Many find the concept of holy silence puzzling but as we worked and prayed there was no need to speak at all…..’ (Call the Midwife – Series 2, Episode 8)

Perhaps this is the meaning of that strange phrase in one of the Eucharistic Prayers from Common Worship, ‘all your works echo the silent music of your praise.’?  Silence, lived and felt well, is not emptiness; it is the musical accompaniment to the whispers of God’s love.

Music too, proclaims that same love.  I maintain frequently on my daily Pause for Thought slot in Rob Dunger’s show on Felixstowe Radio that all songs are love songs.  Whenever we sing, we love.  Which is why music is a cacophony to the devil.  

Good Friday in our house is a wonderful mélange of silence and music.  After the silent vigil of Maundy Thursday night comes a time of praise and prayer and worship with fellow Christians in the centre of our town.  Then an hour of contemplation and few words ‘At the Foot of the Cross’ and often a choral cantata in the evening.  A day spent listening to God say ‘I Love You’ in silence and words and music.  Rich food indeed!

This is disastrous for Screwtape.  He doesn’t want silence or music – he just wants ‘noise’.  Like the squeaks and squeals produced by an ancient wireless as its valves warm up and struggle to tune in to a radio station, demons want our lives filled with nothing intelligible.  If we have true silence we can hear God’s whispers more clearly, if there is rich music the Beloved’s song of love fills our hearts to overflowing.

Our task, as we come closer to the Friday Noon of the outpouring of His love, is to turn away from the noise and static of the world and tune in to His voice be it in the sweet silence of an hour’s quiet or the aching melody of ‘A Solemn Musick’  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlMohFNPaag