‘Non in Commotione Dominus’
God Is Not Found in Agitation

It is night. One can sense the absolute stillnes that inhabits the darkness captured in the photograph. In an atmosphere like this, the soul feels invited to reflect. All the circumstances of daily life – great or small, pleasant, tiresom or even painful – all disappear. Alone with oneself, man can transcend all this and enter the inner realm of recollection, reflection and study.

It is an austere and calm happiness. In a word, it is true happiness.

In our photograph this happiness is felt vividly.

Three lights are lit in it. The least important is the one that properly deserves the name of light: it is the candle. Its reflection on the book constitutes the second glowing light of the picture. One has the impression that the thoughts contained in the text have become luminous.

The light of the candle and the reflection in the book illuminate the face, and thus we see the third and most authentic light, which is that of the attentive and astute soul who reads. Analyzing this face immersed in reading, we see that it is calm, absorbed, happy.

This is, as we said, the happiness of isolation and recollection, the happiness of thinking…

The lovers of this happiness were frequent in the past, but those who enjoy it today are becoming increasingly rare.
*

Celebrating a sports victory in a Harlem bar in the 1950s

On the contrary, the number of people who only feel pleasure in noise, agitation and “exciting” sensations is growing.

In New York, in the Harlem neighborhood, fans have just learned of the victory of their champion. Among all peoples and classes today there is a general tendency among everyone to believe that happiness is this…

* Those who know the pleasure of recollection are in possession of a precious prerequisite for sanctification “O beata solitudo, o sola beatitudo!” [O blessed solitude, the only blessedness] said St. Bernard.

But for those who live amidst perpetual hustle and bustle, those who neither know nor want to live outside of it, how much noise drowns out the voice of grace…

“Non in commotione Dominus”
God is not found in agitation (3 Kgs 19:11 )

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Catolicismo n. 114 - June 1960
Posted June 22, 2026

• How Noisy the World Has Become
• Silence Is Golden
• The Principle of Gradualism, How Evil Progresses
• Calmness, an Integral Part of Innocence
• How Silent Night Reflects the German Mentality
• Sacral Contemplation, the Antidote to Secularism
• Contemplation of a Spiritual Nature

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