A Word from Paul of Thebes
Father Paul, I feel cut off. The future is dark, my life uncertain. I feel adrift; unknown, forgotten, unwanted. My heart trembles at the thought that this may be all there is: loneliness, exile, silence without end.
Child, do you think I did not taste this? My own blood turned against me. My inheritance was a snare, my family a threat. I ran into the desert with nothing, not because I was brave but because I had no place else to stand. The world cast me out. Even my kin hunted me down. You fear being forgotten? I was forgotten for ninety years.
But Father, how did you endure? How did you wake each day with no word of comfort, no friend, no sign of tomorrow?
I learned to let tomorrow die. I learned that there is no comfort but God. The cave was my grave, and every day I buried my desires there. Bread came by a raven’s beak, but the true food was the silence that stripped me bare. I learned this: to be unknown is freedom, to be forgotten is truth. You lament exile, but exile is the gate of heaven.
Still, I am weak. I want the warmth of others. I want direction, something sure to hold onto. The silence feels like abandonment.
Yes. Silence will break you. It will show you what you are without God: dust and breath. It will strip the mask off your fears, until you know your own poverty. But it is there, in the breaking, that God enters. Consolation is not sweet words. Consolation is His presence filling the void where everything else has died.
Then my fear, my exile, my uncertainty, are these not curses?
They are mercy. To be driven into the desert is a gift, even when it feels like death. To be unknown, uncertain, exiled; that is the shape of the Cross. And if you embrace it, the cave becomes light, the silence becomes fire, the loneliness becomes communion. Do not run. Stay. Let yourself be emptied. God Himself will come to fill you.
