Repleti sunt omnes Spiritu Sancto et coeperunt loqui... A versicle and response for Pentecost.
They were all filled with the Holy Spirit.  And they began to speak.

Communication is a first fruit of the coming of the Holy Spirit.

In 1843, Samuel Morse obtained use of the right-of-way along the New Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, between Baltimore and Washington, to erect wire for his telegraph. A year later this first message was tapped out, one letter at a time: "What hath God wrought?" It was thought a marvel, and it was. Ever after there was a telegraph office in every railroad station. Communication is a most significant aspect of the human scene. We speak naturally. And from the dawn of speech we extend the faculty to unimagined dimensions.

Indian trails, waterways by river and canal, highways and throughways are a web covering the nation. From telegraph to telephone to radio to television to facsimile to electronic networks by cable and satellite, instant communication is possible to almost anywhere when a superb mail system will not suffice. We do love to stay in touch. From clay tablet to papyrus to parchment to paper, the written, printed word is endlessly multiplied. It must be in the nature of our kind to communicate.

And in the nature of God Almighty too. So it is a god-like gift. The inner communion of God we call the mystery of the Holy Trinity.

And when God would speak to us in a most appealing way, He moves beyond creation, beyond His omnipotence, His omnipresence, His dominion over all, in all, to the amazing length of the Incarnation in which He sent His Son, the Word, the Word of God. God speaks, and His Son is the Word He speaks.

Now, after Ascension, His mission is accomplished through His Life, and Death, His Rising from the dead. Christ ascends to His Father and promises the ultimate communication, which is the Holy Spirit -- here all along, but now in a most dynamic, powerful, personal way.

And a first fruit of the Spirit's coming is speech. They spoke in tongues the wonders of God. The Magnalia Dei. And they are commissioned to go forth into all the world and speak the Good News.

Is it not remarkable that our response to all of this is the Silent Life? We are into a cult of quiet, the love of silence, the absence of communication. This gives one pause.

We need not have been here long to remember restrictions on mail to just a few times a year. And no phones, or with abbreviated dials. Not to mention visits limited to family, if possible, once a year. Here. Not there.

Styles and methods change, but what is current is still a very dramatic art form: there is another communication on another level, in a different strata, in a unique orbit. There is communion with God and with one another and with all the world which is in the grace of God, the life of God, the love of God, by means of which we enter into a communion as real as life and as hidden.

We do not know what life is. We know life only by signs, the signs of life. The inner life of God within is even more subtle, unexplainable. Yet no less real.

And when in that channel, on that wave length, on that route, we can reach further than any satellite, go as deep as deep can be.

Our silence says this. Glory to God for the marvels the human mind has created in spanning water with magnificent bridges, with mighty tunnels, send our own kind to the moon and have them return, project equipment into almost infinite space to listen, to record, to photo -- all to the glory of God.

Yet, to reach God is more. And to hear God. And to worship God is more. Infinitely more. This is the message of the quiet life.  Listen!  God speaks. He speaks to every human heart. And answer Him. For God waits a word of love from every human heart.  Amen