The sound of silence: a directed retreat experience

In 1980, I made my first retreat at Loyola House in Morristown.  This period of recollection was entitled a “silent directed retreat” because the entire experience was to take place in a setting of silence, with periodic conferences with a retreat director. I decided on Loyola House because discerning a vocation to the priesthood, in my mind, required silence.  I needed to remove all the distractions of daily life that could prevent me from hearing God’s “voice,” such as radio, TV and phones.  
What complicated my discernment was my being torn between entering the Jesuits or becoming a diocesan priest. I was attracted to the Society of Jesus since their principal apostolate was education and, up until this point, I had been a high school teacher of Spanish and French. At the same time, what drew me toward the secular or diocesan priesthood was the multifaceted ministry with families.
When I arrived at the retreat center, I met Jesuit Father Bill Porter who was to be my retreat director.  I will never forget how, on my first visit with Father Porter, I started rattling off a battery of questions about the direction I should take with the quest of discernment. Instead of answering these questions, he told me to go read a prescribed passage of Scripture and meditate on these verses that had as their theme complete dependence on Divine Providence.  “Consider the ravens: they do not sow, they do not reap, they neither have cellar nor barn—yet God feeds them.  How much more important you are than the birds...” (Lk. 12:24)
Excited about excavating God’s voice from this Scripture passage, I returned to my room. I felt awkward there because it was the first time in my life that I occupied a space without radio, TV or phone. I did have a bed, chest of drawers, a Bible, a journal and a pen! After reading the assigned Scripture, I decided to meditate on the beautiful grounds of the retreat center. I would pass people who also were on retreat; still, on a silent retreat, listening is the “modus operandi” to communing with God, even at meals! Indeed, the sound of silence was deafening at first. As the days passed, I came to embrace the silence as the conduit through which God communicated his will for me. Little by little, day by day, Father Porter worked with me and continued to assign passages of Scripture, which I was to read prayerfully.  Eventually, I came to understand through his acuity, patience and the sound of silence that a decision as large as the one facing me, could not be done in five days or, even 30 days (which  Jesuits are required to do at some point in their formation).
Aware of the opportunity that I had to be a teaching assistant while attending graduate school at the University of New Mexico, Father Porter recommended that I accept this position. He pointed out that the two years required by the school for this Master’s Degree could be an excellent time to discern God’s will for me.
When I arrived in Albuquerque, I rented an apartment, attended daily Mass and started to pray the breviary or Liturgy of the Hours on my own.  I became involved with a Hispanic parish in the north valley of the city. The pastor there became my mentor and spiritual director. As a secular priest who had a Ph.D. in philosophy and psychology, who taught in the seminary in Santa Fe as well as a university in Las Vegas, New Mexico, his life brought home a truth that I had not considered. I did not have to become a Jesuit to teach in academia. There was enough flexibility in the diocesan priesthood to engage in family ministry full time and teach part time.
I encourage those of you who have never been on a silent directed retreat to consider taking one. Who knows what God will tell you through the sound of silence?     
Father Comandini is managing editor of The Catholic Spirit