Ver­non Khelawan

To­day, As­cen­sion Sun­day, we ob­serve the 46th edi­tion of World Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Day, which holds spe­cial sig­nif­i­cance for the uni­ver­sal Ro­man Catholic Church. Its im­por­tance is am­pli­fied by the fact that each suc­ceed­ing Pope has al­ways penned an an­nu­al mes­sage for the faith­ful. Pope Bene­dict XVI, in his mes­sage for 2012 has themed it "Si­lence and Word: Path of Evan­ge­li­sa­tion". He shares some re­flec­tions con­cern­ing an as­pect of the hu­man process of com­mu­ni­ca­tion which, de­spite its im­por­tance, is of­ten over­looked and which at the present time, it would seem es­pe­cial­ly nec­es­sary to re­call. Re­fer­ring to his theme, Pope Bene­dict XVI stat­ed: "It con­cerns the re­la­tion­ship be­tween si­lence and word; two as­pects of com­mu­ni­ca­tion which need to be kept in bal­ance, to al­ter­nate and to be in­te­grat­ed with one an­oth­er if au­then­tic di­a­logue and deep close­ness be­tween peo­ple are to be achieved. "When word and si­lence be­come mu­tu­al­ly ex­clu­sive, com­mu­ni­ca­tion breaks down, ei­ther be­cause it gives rise to con­fu­sion or be­cause, on the con­trary, it cre­ates an at­mos­phere of cold­ness; when they com­ple­ment one an­oth­er, how­ev­er, com­mu­ni­ca­tion ac­quires val­ue and mean­ing," wrote the Pope. "Si­lence is an in­te­gral el­e­ment of com­mu­ni­ca­tion," con­tin­ued Pope Bene­dict; "in its ab­sence, words rich in con­tent can­not ex­ist. In si­lence, we are bet­ter able to lis­ten to and un­der­stand our­selves; ideas come to birth and ac­quire depth; we un­der­stand with greater clar­i­ty what it is we want to say and what we ex­pect from oth­ers and we choose how to ex­press our­selves. "By re­main­ing silent, we al­low the oth­er per­son to speak, to ex­press him or her­self and we avoid be­ing tied sim­ply to our own words and ideas with­out them be­ing ad­e­quate­ly test­ed. In this way, space is cre­at­ed for mu­tu­al lis­ten­ing and deep­er hu­man re­la­tion­ships be­come pos­si­ble," the Pon­tiff added.

Pope Bene­dict then point­ed out that it was of­ten in si­lence that the most au­then­tic com­mu­ni­ca­tion takes place be­tween peo­ple who are in love: ges­tures, fa­cial ex­pres­sions and body lan­guage which are signs by which they re­veal them­selves to each oth­er. Joy, anx­i­ety and suf­fer­ing can all be com­mu­ni­cat­ed in si­lence. "In­deed, it pro­vides them with a par­tic­u­lar­ly pow­er­ful mode of ex­pres­sion," he added. Switch­ing to mod­ern day com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the Pope said: "The process of com­mu­ni­ca­tion nowa­days is large­ly fu­elled by ques­tions in search of an­swers. Search en­gines and so­cial net­works have be­come the start­ing point of com­mu­ni­ca­tion for many peo­ple who are seek­ing ad­vice, ideas, in­for­ma­tion and an­swers. "In our time," he con­tin­ued, "the In­ter­net is be­com­ing ever more a fo­rum for ques­tions and an­swers-in­deed, peo­ple to­day are fre­quent­ly bom­bard­ed with an­swers to ques­tions they have nev­er asked and to needs of which they are un­aware." The mes­sage con­tin­ues: "If we are to recog­nise and fo­cus up­on the tru­ly im­por­tant ques­tions, then si­lence is a pre­cious com­mod­i­ty that en­ables us to ex­er­cise prop­er dis­cern­ment in the face of the sur­charge of stim­uli and da­ta that we re­ceive.

"Amid the com­plex­i­ty and di­ver­si­ty of the world of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, how­ev­er, many peo­ple find them­selves con­front­ed with the ul­ti­mate ques­tions of hu­man ex­is­tence. Who am I? What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope? "It is im­por­tant to af­firm those who ask these ques­tions and to open up the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a pro­found di­a­logue, by means of words and in­ter­change, but al­so through the call to silent re­flec­tion, some­thing that is of­ten more elo­quent than a hasty an­swer and per­mits seek­ers to reach in­to the depths of their be­ing and open them­selves to the path to­wards knowl­edge that God has in­scribed in hu­man hearts," added the mes­sage. The Pope al­so stat­ed that at­ten­tion should be paid to the var­i­ous types of Web sites, ap­pli­ca­tions and so­cial net­works which can help peo­ple to­day to find time for re­flec­tion and au­then­tic ques­tion­ing, as well as mak­ing space for si­lence and oc­ca­sions for prayer, med­i­ta­tion or shar­ing the word of God. "Word and si­lence: learn­ing to com­mu­ni­cate is learn­ing to lis­ten and con­tem­plate as well as speak. This is es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant for those en­gaged in the task of evan­ge­li­sa­tion; both si­lence and word are es­sen­tial el­e­ments, in­te­gral to the church's work of com­mu­ni­ca­tion for the sake of a re­newed procla­ma­tion of Christ in to­day's world," added the mes­sage. Ad­mon­ish­ing the church, Pope Bene­dict XVI stat­ed: "In silent con­tem­pla­tion, then, the eter­nal Word, through whom the world was cre­at­ed, be­comes ever more pow­er­ful­ly present and we be­come aware of the plan of sal­va­tion that God is ac­com­plish­ing through­out our his­to­ry by word and deed."

VER­NON KHELAWAN is the me­dia re­la­tions of­fi­cer of Catholic Me­dia Ser­vices Ltd (Cam­sel), the of­fi­cial com­mu­ni­ca­tion arm of the Arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain.