The Silent God and the Silenced: Mysticism and Contemplation Amid Suffering is a deeply moving and thoughtful reflection and exposition by Georgetown University faculty member Min-Ah Cho on, among other things, a relationship between God who is beyond the limits of language and human construct and the experience of God’s presence in silence. More to the point, she writes about a silent God that faithful listeners can hear and encounter in suffering and silence. Fittingly, the preface opens with Psalm 46:10: Be still and know that I am God!

The metaphor of space is key in Cho’s reflective analysis on the silent God and the silenced, as she notes that space leaves room for people to hear voices not yet heard. In the midst of what at times may seem more like a clanging gong of rhetoric and opinion than meaningful discourse about the ultimate meaning of life, etc., she reminds her readers that there is the mystical and contemplative call from the ineffable and soundless space before and beyond any such sound, a dimension in life that beckons people to listen again to God’s voice in what we might call the night of the apophatic way. Two halves of the same call and experience, mystical silence “leads one to a transcendent experience beyond the confinement of an ordinary horizon, while contemplative silence fosters a relationship with the divine and others” (29). Both orient a person “to the divine, who exists in loving communion, whose triune being is relationality itself” (29).

Stated differently, mystical and contemplative dimensions of silence enable silent seekers to encounter God beyond all language, concepts, and categories and to live for God and others as God would have it here and now, always rooted in, listening for, and oriented in a holistic way to becoming one with the divine. Silent seekers live from the divinely gifted space free from the limits of human reasonings and conceptions, philosophical, religious, political, cultural, or otherwise. They live from the whole, the ineffable ground of all, rather than from any categorical and confining place.

Cho notes that people who make space for God are more apt to hear the mystical and contemplative God of silence. They wait on God in silence instead of choosing to adopt as their own a limiting view about them or any other person or community, which can fill up space with less honorable discourse or be demoralizing and/or divisive. She emphasizes that those who see beyond the categorizing stereotypes of the other, who not only make space for the ultimate Other but who live from that space, are trust bearers and carriers of the silent voice and power of God in the mystical and contemplative tradition. They find voice and joy because the One whose soundless voice surpasses all sounds sees and hears them and they in turn live free in this space. They find voice and joy because this silent voice gives them the freedom and power to respond positively to injustice, ignorance, and betrayal. This is true for people who have known others’ silencing of them, no matter the form of silence, as well as those who have come to see the immorality of their use of a misguided, prejudiced stance without divine merit. Cho challenges those who employ prejudiced stances as well as those who internalize these stances to move beyond such narratives and to open themselves up to the supernatural horizon of God, that is, in Rahner’s words, which Cho quotes, “the eternal and silent mystery, which we call God and his secret grace” (26).

While a common thread running through the book involves the mystical and contemplative call to move beyond preconceived notions of “the other,” Cho focuses especially on how this call concerns the suffering of marginalized and vulnerable people and communities. Cho respects the fact that her work may seem to be yet another constructive attempt to explain the unexplainable of suffering, but she respectfully perseveres in her project as a person trained in constructive theology and Christian spirituality to listen for what silence in its many forms can in fact teach. She does so as she listens to and draws on the works of many ancient and contemporary people and includes in her circle—as in a circle of concerned citizens across time and space—those from the mystical, biblical, and liturgical traditions. In her preface and first two chapters, her focus is more broadly on setting the stage for what it means to engage silence as a resource for an encounter with God in general and amid suffering in particular. The empty tomb of Jesus has a pivotal role to play in the second half of the book, as Cho examines in chapter 3 “The Silence of Jesus’ empty tomb: Listening to Silent Cries and Suffering”; in chapter 4, “The Silent Women and the Empty Tomb: Listening to Unheard Stories”; and, in chapter 5, “The Silent Joy of the Empty Tomb: Attention to the Void”. In this last chapter, Cho writes about “attention to small things in the graveyards,” offering a beautiful reminder of the many voices one can hear in the graveyard, voices from the past, the unheard and unseen. “The community of the silenced in the graveyards extends beyond the realm of the living, as the silences of the residents are intrinsically linked to the silenced memories in history.” The Epilogue serves to remind Cho’s readers that narratives about the experience of suffering are not isolated ones. While “each of us inhabits a unique intersection of struggles, [there is the concentric circle, an open space] where our life contexts converge. While our paths and experiences may differ, we are not solitary entities within this circle. Rather, we behold one another in . . . [an open] spiral” (173). From this space, faithful and attentive listeners listen and pay attention to the silent God together.

The work overall is sound and illustrative as Cho explores the experiences of those who suffer others’ silence of them (their dismissal, marginalization of them). Cho offers insights into the experience of hope in the midst of such suffering and discusses how silence as a resource, positively speaking, can be a constructive means to wholeness and saving grace and a counter-silence to erroneous and otherwise immoral attempts to silence or otherwise limit those who do not fit one’s (or society’s) preconceived notions. In the process, she beautifully and clearly shows her readers how one can productively engage silence in a discourse about silence, all the while nodding to the truth of the psalmist’s prose: Be Still and Know that I am God.