The Sacrament of Silence
by Layne Matthews Boles
I sat next to Liam beside his parents on a wooden pew at St. Anne’s Catholic Center. It was November in Texas, and I wore wood-block heels and a long-sleeve green dress with small blue birds on it. Liam had said he liked this dress because it matched my eyes, so I wore it for him. His mother complimented me, too. Though her son would soon be confirmed as a Catholic, which she decidedly was not, she seemed to hope I could win him back to the other side. I was raised Baptist.
Friends and families of the other soon-to-be Catholics packed the pews at the front of the sanctuary. While the priest spoke, Liam stood beside me, and he stared unflinching at Fr. Ben. When directed by the priest, the candidates and congregation said together the Nicene Creed.
“I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins.”
I knew this creed. I said it every Sunday at my Anglican church in Dallas. My eyes moved from the front of the sanctuary to Liam’s thick hair, black suit, and tie. He looked handsome, and I recognized in his face what I thought, after a month of dating, was happiness. I’d come to know it as the zeal of a convert.
Liam stepped out of the pew and strode to the front where the priest was standing with the other candidates. One by one, Fr. Ben walked down the line. A young man in a white robe followed behind carrying a bowl, and when they got to Liam, Fr. Ben dipped his fingers in the bowl and placed them on Liam’s forehead. As he did, Fr. Ben spoke into his mic so we could hear: “Be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
“Just so you know,” he undid his arm. “It doesn’t bother me that you aren’t Catholic.”
I wondered at the ritual and my now marked boyfriend. Liam, the priest, and the bowl all seemed foreign and distant. That night, I walked into St. Anne’s thinking this was all ceremony, just a celebration of Liam’s decision, but something seemed to be happening up there. The tacky pastel blue walls glimmered under the bright ceiling lights. I asked myself: did they mean that I, or any non-Catholic, doesn’t have the Holy Spirit?
I didn’t arrive at an answer before Liam walked back to our pew.
He sat down and I leaned over to him. “You did it,” I whispered.
Liam smiled and reached for my hand.
Later that night, Liam and I sat in my driveway in the front cab of his truck. My roommates, Evelyn and Patty, were home but out of sight.
Liam lifted the leather console that separated us, and I scooted over from the passenger seat. He put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer, into his ribcage. I could smell the gel in his hair and was only inches away from his lips. I felt excited by this new intimacy. I waited for Liam to make a move.
“Just so you know,” he undid his arm. “It doesn’t bother me that you aren’t Catholic.”
Confused, and a little disappointed I didn’t get a kiss, I sat up. I knew Liam had been nervous I wouldn’t date him because he was Catholic. In my ignorance, I hadn’t considered it went both ways.
“I know.”
“At the end of the day, we both love Jesus. We’re about the same thing.”
I told him I agreed. His eyes relaxed, and he reached his arm around my shoulders again. But really, I was less certain now than I was before this conversation, or before this night. What were the differences between Protestantism and Catholicism?
Seemingly everything. Seemingly nothing.
We lingered there, together. Then I went inside.
* * *
Liam and I kept dating, but I didn’t go to Mass with him right away. I wasn’t looking to change my faith in an extreme way. I was Anglican, but flavors of my Baptist roots ran through my veins. Catholicism, to me, still belonged to another world I did not fit into. Plus, I liked my routines.
I wanted not just reverence, but also roots—something earthy and rhythmic to order my life.
When I’d started college two years before Liam’s confirmation, I’d begun to nudge my way into a more contemplative life. I had veered further away from what now felt like the loud, dark churches of my youth, common then for big “mega-churches” in Texas. My family had gone to a Presbyterian church for a while, which was much quieter and subdued, but left when I was in first grade. Now, I craved more of that silence. And if not silence, poetry and a history to anchor my faith. I craved ritual over the bare thimble of juice and a cracker once a month that made up communion at my parents' church. I wanted not just reverence, but also roots—something earthy and rhythmic to order my life. Most of all, I needed a God who I could sit with unmediated by the sound of a bass. Whether in solitude or company, just He and I. Quiet and present.
Since I hadn’t found a church that would create this space for me, I sought it on my own. Each morning, I woke up in a cinderblock dorm room and used my phone light to help me find my Bible, journal, and pencil while I tried not to wake my roommate, Kate. Coffee in hand, I’d leave Kate and head down the hall to a study nook where I could turn on the lights. Under the harsh overhead bulb, I read a passage of scripture, wrote a prayer in my journal, and sat in silence until it was time to go to class. I created a space for God and I to meet, before the day began.
Years earlier, my mom had told me she used to go down to the laundry room of her dorm and pray on her knees, sometimes for three hours at a time. She said she did this to be close to God. When she described her daily routine, she told me she was obsessive.
I imagined her, knees pressed against the cold tile floor, like an ascetic sitting on nails to suffer. She didn’t need to be dunked in a baptismal pool to be right with God. She was nearly a saint, monastic without realizing it. She sought the Divine more than any food or drink.
Her hunger for God burned in me too, enough to make me sit before my 8 a.m. class in a scratchy chair in a cold, damp room. I reached out to hear Him, see Him, feel Him, whatever it took. This touch point to Heaven, before the world came rushing in, seemed to be the only way.
* * *
When I went home for Christmas break that December, two months after Liam’s confirmation and three since we’d been dating, I spoke to my mom about what I’d been learning about Catholicism.
Liam had explained to me why he decided to be Catholic, about the others who “crossed the Tiber” and inspired him to do the same. I listened to these stories with interest, even desire— the more I learned, the more I heard the echoes of the stories I loved as a child. These were tales of faraway places in past times, of heroic people devoted to God. It was all so romantic. I still didn’t fully understand why someone who wasn’t already Catholic would convert, only that Liam had done it, and I admired him for that. Like any good story, I wanted to share it.
My mom and I sat at a table just wiped clean by the hostess at our favorite breakfast spot, Café Brazil. It was raining outside, and my mom graded papers while I got ahead on some reading for a course I would take in the spring semester. It was midafternoon, and the restaurant was empty except for a few students taking advantage of the bottomless coffee.
“So, I’ve been reading about these people who converted to Catholicism.” A waitress came by and poured our coffee. “It’s interesting. I didn’t realize there were so many—thank you.”
The young girl smiled and walked away. My mom continued to mark a student’s essay with red ink, but I needed to interrupt her, needed her to help me sort through these stories I hadn’t been able to shake.
“Do you know who Thomas Howard is?”
“No.”
I eyed her.
When I first told my mom about Liam, she said at one point she’d thought about becoming Catholic. She went through RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults—the Catholic confirmation classes) in her early twenties. My mom was attracted to Catholicism. Like me, she craved words, Silence.
Howard was an author and the brother of missionary, and author, Elisabeth Elliot. Elliot is a household name in the evangelical world. When her brother, Howard, converted to Catholicism, it was a big deal, and was the kind of thing my mom would know about.
In unwarranted pride, I thought of those who left their family and friends because they heard the call of God. They followed Truth, not the opinions of others, even those they loved most.
“He’s written a book—”
“Did Liam tell you about it?” Her focus was now on me. Her eyes searched mine like they were a map, and there was an edge in her voice.
I took another sip of my coffee. “Well, no. I found it. It’s called Lead, Kindly Light.”
We were alone in our corner of the restaurant. There weren’t many people to serve, but feet shuffled in the back kitchen, and pans hit stoves and sinks. Our waitress took the order of a young couple sitting at the bar, and I glanced at them for a moment.
“Does Liam want you to become Catholic?”
“No—"
“I just don’t want you to do something because Liam says you should. And how about Dad, and grandma?”
There was no room for my voice. I raised the now-cool coffee to my lips and looked out the window at the street.
“He’s so young—how does he know he wants to be Catholic?”
I sat there angry. I thought my mom disingenuous and double-minded. She admired Catholics, so I couldn’t understand how she could simultaneously hold hostility toward the idea of me becoming one. It seemed like she was sure that if my boyfriend was a zealot for the Catholic faith, I’d necessarily be swayed to be one too. I was better than that, I thought.
I was a 21st century woman.
I would never.
We left the restaurant and drove in near silence. A spark of rebellion formed within me. I remembered the women and men who risked their lives for the faith. In unwarranted pride, I thought of those who left their family and friends because they heard the call of God. They followed Truth, not the opinions of others, even those they loved most. I wasn’t ready to become Catholic, but if I did, it would be because I made my own choice.
My head rested on the cold window glass and on the shoulders of saints past. The anger ebbed as we drove, but my determination remained.
* * *
I visited Liam in his small town in south Texas toward the end of the break. His parents let me stay in a guest room, and one evening after watching a movie in the upstairs loft, Liam and I kissed for the first time. After that night, we thought our relationship may have a future. We both hoped, perhaps, we had found our lifelong partners. And, while my relationships with my family felt strained, Liam’s presence was reassuring. His companionship felt like it might be enough.
I’d come to memorize much of the liturgy of a Catholic Mass, but I still felt like an outsider.
A couple months later, I walked into St. Anne’s to meet Liam at Mass on the Sunday before spring break. When I approached the doors, I could hear the student choir singing a prelude over the otherwise silent room.
I’d come to memorize much of the liturgy of a Catholic Mass, but I still felt like an outsider. I worried a little about what would happen if we were to get married. I often thought, if only I was born Catholic. Other couples don’t have to deal with this!
I found Liam in a pew toward the front. His head barely rose above mine, but his chest was wide, and he was strong. Next to him, my worries ceased. I felt safe while Liam and I pressed our knees side by side on the cushioned kneeler. Safe in this place, where a priest told me I was blessed, though I couldn’t take communion. Where my boyfriend prayed beside me, and there was beauty, and smells, and words.
When we came back to our pew after communion, I sat while Liam prayed.
Mary looked at me from her marble perch to the left of the altar. I stared back at her, and we remained there together. Two women, taking up small space in this large room. I wondered what she was telling me.
* * *
Mass with Liam became a habit, one that evolved when, after spring break in March of 2020, students were sent home and services went online. That spring and summer in lockdown, I snuck upstairs in my parents’ house in Dallas, or waited until no one was home, and watched Mass at St. Anne’s on my computer.
I hoped these rituals, these objects, would conjure a faith within me.
I knelt on the carpet of our upstairs guest room and crossed myself during the “Gloria Patri.” I didn’t know how to pray a rosary, but the loop of plastic beads which Liam had given me felt good between my fingers, and I rubbed one bead at a time in no order. I hoped these rituals, these objects, would conjure a faith within me. In our upstairs room, I devoted myself to a story I wished to be a part of. While I listened to the priest, said the prayers and petitions, I embodied my secret hope:
“I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins.”
The Church and Liam’s beliefs stretched across the pandemic distance and carried me through the moments of uncertainty. That fall, once we were back at school, I took the first step toward truly becoming Catholic and started attending RCIA classes at our college parish.
On a Friday in October, a week before my birthday, a couple months before I’d graduate, I went home to see my family for the weekend. Things had been off with Liam and I for a few weeks. He kept bringing up his fear that he would be called to the priesthood; sometimes, he even admitted that he was attracted to the idea. It seemed to weigh on him deeply, to press on his conscience, but I didn’t understand why. And he was quick to reassure me he wanted a wife—he wanted me.
I didn’t think he’d really become a priest. Admittedly, I didn’t think we were the kind of people to choose a celibate life, like there’s a type. That was for the super devout—the guys with no social skills. The girls who wore long skirts and veils over their heads. I thought I was safe.
Liam came over before I left for Dallas. I sat next to him on my twin bed, just made. Our feet dangled off the side like when we sat on the end of his truck bed under stars. He turned to me.
“I love you, Layne.” His hand glided across my sweatshirt to the small of my back, and he leaned in to kiss me. I moved my hand to touch his cheek and we kissed for what felt like a long time—still sitting upright, innocent and passionate and loving.
It was sunny when we finally made our way outside to say goodbye. He waved from his truck window and pulled out of the driveway.
* * *
Three days later, I drove back to school, and Liam broke up with me on the back porch of my house. It was dark outside, and cicadas clicked in the overgrown grass our landlord hadn’t mowed yet.
The shock of his words sealed me up. I was frozen in the cold chair.
We slipped into two metal chairs, and I placed my hand on his knee. He looked down like it was a sad thing, a pitiful gesture. A foreboding hole formed in my stomach, and I pulled my hand away.
“I don’t have peace about us.”
The shock of his words sealed me up. I was frozen in the cold chair. My eyes moved from his, and I looked to the grass and let silence sit between us.
“But when I said I loved you, Layne, I meant it. I promise.”
Then, I looked at him.
Liam stared at me with tears in his eyes. I wanted to scream. Yell and fight and tell him he couldn’t do this. It wasn’t fair. But when I didn’t speak, Liam offered little else.
I leaned over, my head in my hands.
I couldn’t look at him, but I managed to ask, “Did I do something wrong?”
He didn’t have anything beyond the trite, vague words everyone used when they don’t have a better answer. “It’s not you.”
I felt so defeated, didn’t know what else to say to make him stay.
Liam stood, and I asked if I could hug him. I got out of the cold chair and put my face into his shoulders.
“I’ll miss you,” I whispered.
“I’ll miss you too.”
Liam pulled away from me and walked through the back gate to his truck. It was Sunday night, and I had class the next morning. RCIA on Tuesday. My birthday was Wednesday.
I stood in the dark where the cicadas still clicked, and crickets rubbed their legs in the still, muggy heat. A car drove down my street. Liam’s truck started with a rumble and then it, too, faded. I burst into tears.
* * *
The night of my birthday, I lay in my bed. My friends had thrown me a party earlier in the evening—I didn’t tell many people about the breakup but hoped the word had spread so no one would mention Liam.
I would need to answer my own questions.
Liam may have started my Catholic search, but I was going to finish it.
We all threw back a shot of our chosen drink; mine was gin. Not even a little drunk (but wishing, for the first time in my life, that I was), I swung at a piñata the size of a small dog and then roasted a s’more over our fire pit. I tried not to look at the chairs a few feet away, where Liam and I sat just four nights earlier. Evelyn’s boyfriend helped us get rid of the burnt wood, which made me cry later.
Tired and eyes puffy, I laid on my back under lamplight after the party and replayed the breakup again. In the popcorn ceiling, I observed the scene: the chairs we sat in, his face, what was and wasn’t said, and as I remembered it all, I wondered: Why didn’t I speak?
I rolled over and felt sick.
My Catholic study Bible lay on the ground next to the bed in front of my makeshift bookcase, a stack of wooden crates. The book’s casual appearance, opened and fresh from looking up something I couldn’t remember, beckoned me.
I was alone to grapple with the unknowns. The familiar determination—the sadness, turned to anger, turned to action—came with a force more powerful than my grief.
I would need to answer my own questions.
Liam may have started my Catholic search, but I was going to finish it.
“Lead on, Kindly Light,” I whispered, and turned off the lamp.
* * *
I graduated from college that December and moved home. In Dallas, Catholicism was on my mind every day and every hour—distracting me, keeping me from watching a movie with my family while I read in my room, making me too unsure to go to my Anglican church. I didn’t recognize it then, but I was obsessed. Looking back, I can see my compulsive need to have absolute certainty in my decisions, especially when it came to faith.
Looking back, I can see my compulsive need to have absolute certainty in my decisions, especially when it came to faith.
If I was going to risk relationships and give all my allegiance to the Catholic Church’s teachings, though, I had to know they were right. I continued to read, wait, and listen.
There was a parish in a wealthy neighborhood of Dallas where I went to Mass. The priest’s name was Fr. Scott. His weekly homilies represented to me the quality and seemingly endless depth of the Catholic intellectual tradition I so craved. When I found out he was a convert from Anglicanism, it seemed God had tossed me a bone. Fr. Scott would help me become Catholic.
It was the beginning of Lent, forty days left until Easter. Forty days until RCIA classes finished and I had to make a decision. The clock was ticking.
One evening at Mass, I knelt in my pew after the service and looked at the large crucifix above the altar, wooden with a metal figure of Jesus hanging on it. It was cold in the sanctuary, a late February day.
Rather than the pregnant stillness which was so powerful to me when I first began going to Mass with Liam, I now felt a void. On my knees, I whispered a prayer to that void. “Jesus, show me the way. I believe this is your Church. Help me in my unbelief.”
Right then Fr. Scott walked down the center aisle. He walked quickly, but I crossed myself, jumped up, and headed toward him.
“Fr. Scott,” I whispered with some volume. There were still people praying. The eye of an older woman turned toward me, and she fingered her rosary like she counted my days.
“Fr. Scott.” He looked in my direction and stopped.
“Yes?”
“Could I meet with you soon?”
“Of course,” he then stared ahead and thought. “But probably not this week. I have several meetings and a conference of bishops coming...”
“That’s fine. I’m not Catholic.”
I cringed at my awkward desperation. The room seemed to get more silent, but I kept going. “But I’m looking to be. I know you also converted.”
“Yes! Just email me and we’ll set up an appointment.”
I walked out of the church relieved.
* * *
I sat across from Fr. Scott on a small grey couch in his upstairs office. I told him what I’d been reading—the literature, all the proofs and reasoning by Catholic Christian apologists that seemed to point to the Church.
“So, you see the window.” He smiled at me from behind his desk, the scattered pictures of his family smiling too, as though I was on the verge of discovering a secret.
“The window?”
“A friend of mine described it that way.” He leaned back in his office chair. “When you recognize for the first time that the Catholic Church is just a development of the original Church, the window has been opened to you. All you have to do is climb in.”
“When you recognize for the first time that the Catholic Church is just a development of the original Church, the window has been opened to you. All you have to do is climb in.”
My hands were clasped in my lap and I stared at Fr. Scott. The window. The image turned over in my mind. Was this what non-believers saw when they realized that Jesus was their Lord and savior? I imagined the scales falling from my eyes upon my reception into the church. The clarity. The light.
“But if you don’t enter now, the fear is that you’ll never do it.” He pursed his lips and looked away from me to his shelves of books.
An excitement seized me, coupled with fear.
“I’ll let you know what I decide.” I got up and shook his hand, then left the office.
My confirmation would take place on Easter at St. Theresa’s. My family would come, but my mom told me how hard it would be for them.
“We couldn’t eat from the same table.” My mom and I stood in the kitchen the day after my conversation with Fr. Scott. Tears began to well in her eyes, and she leaned with one hand against the counter. Her head was down, and her brown bangs fell in front of her face.
“It would be one thing if you just appreciated it. You thought it was beautiful. But you believe it ... you believe it’s the one church. That we’re different. And I would know that.” Her eyes dripped with pain. I wanted to cry but I clenched my face as hard as I could.
“But what if it’s true?”
Perhaps this is what Jesus meant, I thought. How we’d have to hate our mothers and fathers for Him.
I was doing it. I prayed He made it worth it.
* * *
I knelt on the ground in the small chapel before the Host. It was Friday morning, two days before Easter and before I had to decide. I had gone to the chapel at St. Theresa’s more than a few times over the last four months—to think, to pray. The carpet was a cream color and there were two wooden kneelers with red cushions. A white, marble bust of Jesus stood in the right corner of the hexagon-shaped room, and I looked at him to give a face to the indiscriminate, unknown, Blessed Sacrament. Inside a gold box in the center of the room was consecrated bread, the very presence of Christ. I almost stepped on a few laminated prayer cards that lay scattered on the ground from people earlier in the day, and plastic, neon rosary beads were stored in a glass container for communal use by the door.
I could sit longer if I leaned on the backs of my calves, so I didn’t use the kneeler. I arrived believing I’d be there for a while.
This house of God, this entity, was supposed to be safe and loving, but would strip me, forcefully, of all comfort and belonging if I gave in.
In front of the Blessed Sacrament, the body and blood of Jesus—the same the people I loved most ate?—I stared at the gold enameled cross on the metal box. This house of God, this entity, was supposed to be safe and loving, but would strip me, forcefully, of all comfort and belonging if I gave in. I turned toward the bust. Then, the heaviness of my head—the pressure I’d sustained for days, months—pulled me down. Finally, I wept.
I had grown used to hearing from people that Christ could be found in the physical world—in sacraments that looked like real food and drink. In the miracles of saints. In a prayer on a string of beads. In a male priest receiving my sins for God. But when I couldn’t believe those things, I didn’t know where to find God. Alone in that chapel—without Liam, without Fr. Scott, without podcasts and books and even God Himself, silent and most mysterious, telling me what to do—I couldn’t climb through the window.
I questioned how I was supposed to know if I was disobeying God when I couldn’t hear Him. Worse, I wondered, feared, that He was abandoning me to a lifetime of uncertainty.
I listened for a little longer. I waited for a voice, for presence, for God to stop me in my tracks.
I heard only silence.
I didn’t become Catholic.
* * *
My parents, my sister and her family, and I took up an entire pew at All Saints Anglican Church. Months after Easter, it was hot, a near-summer day, and the air conditioning blasted on our backs. While we sang, my young niece, Zoe, ran back and forth on the wooden bench behind us.
“Zoe,” I whispered. “Watch out.”
She kept running, and I held out my hand behind me to make sure she didn’t fall. It was easier to watch her than to participate in the service. I couldn’t feel God anymore, and I felt worse pretending to.
During the sermon, I stared at the wooden cross behind the altar where the goblet of wine and bowl of wafers sat. All Christian practice, and even belief, was laced with fear and confusion now. I couldn’t find my way through. Without notice, tears rolled down my cheeks, and I whimpered under my breath. My mom wrapped her arm around my waist, and I laid my head on her shoulder. The priest prepared the bread and wine.
* * *
On a late fall morning dew peppered the grass, and I pressed my hand against my kitchen window to feel the coolness seeping through. I had moved out of my parents’ home and was alone while my housemates were at work. In the afternoon, I tutored neighborhood kids, a new gig, but I had the morning free to go slow. I rarely let myself go slow; I always felt I too much to do—or I had to fill any emptiness. But that morning, I hadn’t set my alarm; my to-do list could wait.
What do you do when you fail to convert, fail to hear God, fail to find Him in the robes, the holy books and food where they said you would?
I sipped my coffee at the table and stared out the window into the grey sky that hovered over our green, brown, and orange backyard. I looked for birds in the bushes, but with no luck. It was just me and the world. I breathed the quiet air.
Then, in the stillness, I noticed I wasn’t alone. I put my feet on the ground and felt the cold tile floor against my feet. Like the floor my mother knelt on.
What do you do when your own thoughts are hard to hear? When you have practiced not listening? What do you do when you fail to convert, fail to hear God, fail to find Him in the robes, the holy books and food where they said you would? What’s left when it’s all gone?
I closed my eyes and let the darkness cover anything that might distract me.
You sit. You don’t listen. You don’t even speak.
You sit in a Presence that has always been with you. When everyone has exited the room, when the creeds and noise and clamor die down, you find Him with you again. You ache with hunger until you must be fed.
There is no prescription for Him. He is stillness, you and Him together. Unmediated. Inseparable.
This is what’s left.
I sat in the Silence and knew He was there.
Layne holds an MFA from Seattle Pacific University in creative nonfiction, and is co-editor of Among Winter Cranes, the quarterly for the Christian Poetics Initiative (CPI) of the Rivendell Center for Theology and the Arts. While also working the front desk of a climbing gym, Layne enjoys life with her husband and cat in Hamden, Connecticut. Her work can be found in Covenant, The Living Church's online journal.
