«You seem to hear something back from the silence!»

Fra Bono on Bono: Conversations with Michka Assayas:

We [my father and I] used to go down to the pub on Sundays and we would dring together. We drank whiskey, Irish whiskey, of course. Occasionally, he would ask a real question, meaning I had to give him a real answer. It was always about my belief in God: «There’s one thing I envy of you. I don’t envy anything else,» he said to me on time.

But think about it: I was singing, doing all the things he would have loved to have done, had a creative life. He said: «You do seem to have a relationship with God.» And I said: «Didn’t you ever have one?» He said: «No.» And I said: «But you have been a Catholic for most of your life.» — «Yeah, lots of people are Catholic. It was a one-way conversation… You seem to hear something back from the silence!» I said: «That’s true, I do.» And he said: «How do you feel it?»

I said: «I hear it in some sort of instinctive way, I feel a response to a prayer, or I feel led in a direction. Or if I’m studying the Scriptures, they become alive in an odd way, and they make sense to the moment I’m in, they’re no longer a historical document.» He was mind-blown by this.