At my house, the TV is off. It will be until Easter. The first time this happened, it was unintentional.
Some years ago, a few weeks before Easter, a burglar took some odd pieces of jewelry, a shirt my cousin gave me for Christmas, and my VCR. Worse, he took the adapter for the cable box. The antenna reception on the TV was bad, so I turned it off until I could get a new adapter. I was busy with seminary and all the stuff of Easter anyway.
Holy Week was quiet that year. I'm from a tradition that doesn't give up things for Lent. In fact, we often pick up the vices others lay down (barbecues on Friday). So when I told my wife I would watch no TV for six weeks, she laughed. She knows I love TV. I worked in TV. I programmed TV. I eagerly tack onto the busiest workday a full night's channel surfing. My wife long ago surrendered the remote to me. But, good sport that she is, she was now willing to give up TV altogether, for my sake.
I must confess nagging doubts in the days before our first intentional media blackout. I would miss March Madness. Voyager might reach home without me. Everybody loves Raymond—except me.
Nevertheless, after the late news on Mardi Gras night, we closed the doors on the TV cabinet and entered Lent in silence.
St. John of the Cross uses the phrase "my house being now all stilled." He refers to the stillness of his spiritual house in which the soul lives without words. In my case, the stillness must come first in a literal sense. My den is stilled before my soul is stilled. In this stilling, we go to sleep a little earlier, we read more carefully, we talk more deeply—when we choose to talk.
By Holy Week, we are ready for Christ to break our silence however he chooses. If we make room by our silence, the Word will resound.
