Masculine Silence of Advent

In the Advent readings the men are always silent, quiet, mute. Zechariah is struck mute when he doubts the angelic message that his elderly wife Elizabeth would conceive. Only after the birth and naming of John ("God is gracious") does he burst into his glorious song of praise, the Benedictus. St. Joseph, of course, is silent throughout as he promptly, vigorously obeys the heavenly directives: take Mary, go to Egypt and then Return from Egypt. The three kings are largely silent as they travel and then offer their gifts, bowing in quiet adoration. John the Baptist, in his mother's womb, jumps for joy...wordlessly. And later retreats into the quiet of the desert. The Word himself...is hidden, quiet, weak, vulnerable, dependent. And of course we contemplate the peaceful Bethlehem scene: mother and child, Joseph, and the mute animals. And so we see the primacy here of masculine silence. John the Baptist preached repentance, but only after his own sojourn in the desert of silence and solitude. Jesus himself spent 40 days in the desert immediately before initiating his own evangelical mission. We men especially need to seek silence. Those of us who grew up in the 1950s had this modeled for us by the strong, silent types: John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Gregory Peck and others. In the 1960s we were told we had to be more like women: expressive of our feelings. But it seems that the male psyche, already prone to "know it all arrogance," needs to be humble, docile and quiet in order for it to have something worth saying.