Chapter 42: The great silence after Compline
Silence should be sought at all times by monks and nuns and this is especially important for them at night time. (From para. 1 of Ch. 42 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)
Silence may allow me to experience either the presence of God or the absence of God. Either way, I proceed in faith, into the darkest time of my day.
Benedict's wisdom about human nature is simple and true for me in this reading. I have done just the opposite so many times and every time it has been proven to me that without silence before the silence of the night the mind and then the body and the spirit are agitated and not peaceful. To have a quiet ritual rooted in prayer and solitary silence helps me to find rest ,"especially at night". "The whole thing is wrapped up in silence, that deep interior silence that is such a creative part of life, of any life, since it allows us to hear the Word of God in the depths of our hearts and to rest there through the hours of darkness."( from A Life-Giving Way, by Esther de Waal).
ReplyDelete“Monastics ought to be zealous for silence at all times.” When I can maintain John Main’s “steel in the spine” that the silence, stillness and simplicity that twice-daily meditation requires of me, then you can say to me, Abba, with Thomas Merton, “Now you are free to go in and out of infinity.” (“A Book of Hours”, Saturday, Dawn). Now that is freedom, indeed.
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