Saint John the Silent. It’s a great moniker–he liked quietness! Born in Armenia in the 5th century, John liked being quiet and having quietness around him!
That idiosyncrasy aside, this saint is important as an example of someone who made a holy commitment–to serve as priest to a congregation–stayed with it for a while, hated it though he did a fine job, and wanted desperately to quit! What is more, John the Silent prayed about it, telling God he’d much rather go off and be a hermit than continue on as a priest…and God gave John the green light to go ahead and quit! God did not assail John with the lines that the church hierarchy thrust at him (that “he was bound not to abandon the spouse [the Church] to which he was tied, or to leave exposed to wolves a flock which the supreme Pastor had intrusted to his care”). Nope. God in fact not only assured John that it was fine to quit, that the years of service as a priest were important and not time wasted, but God also assured John that there was in fact just the perfect hermitage awaiting him (which, as it turned out, was located southeast of Jerusalem).
In John the Silent’s life, we see that the Divine desire is found in the happiness of each and every human, an honoring of the choices we make in good faith and the permission to discern what and how and where we need to be–even if there are others who stand ready to tell us that they know better, that they know what God wants for us, or that we have responsibilities we cannot in good conscience abandon (no matter how unhappy we are).
God is not nearly so intransigent, easily offended, or uncharitable as that combination of external and internalized voices that would consign us to drudgery in the name of misplaced faithfulness.
If John the Silent had never gotten around to actually asking God, and had only stuck at asking friends and bosses, he’d have lived and died unhappily. As it was, John’s life really flourished after making the decision, in faith, to quit! What’s more, once he confessed his heart’s desires in prayer, he recognized that joy, not duty, really is the language of the Divine!