Today, as we enter fully into the season of Lent, I am reminded of one of the questions posed in the Experientia program prepared by the Order to help us reflect on our vocation: Where in the monastery do you feel most yourself? In the church, the scriptorium, the workplace, the woods, or in the refectory? Physical places house spiritual states. A question such as this is an invitation to consider the shape of our vocation, how our unique personality is brought out in and through some aspect of monastic living. One of you recently said to me that you feel most yourself while working. To say this is not to diminish the value and meaning of personal or liturgical prayer or lectio. All these are necessary, all precious. But for each of us there are certain “places” where we find life more readily, where we enjoy the sense that we are exactly where we are meant to be, fully alive under God’s gaze, reflecting his glory in our human being.
Lent is such a place. St Benedict reminds us that the monk’s life should be a continual Lent, though he is aware that not all have the strength for this (RB 49). In other words, Lent is the place in which we can be most ourselves, or at least, become more ourselves. Marked with a cross of ashes on our foreheads, we are claimed as God’s, belonging to the One who fashioned us from the dust. We enter a place of stark simplicity where the air is clear, and the landscape uncluttered. We set aside any superfluity in food, drink, sleep, needless talking and idle jesting so as to focus on the essentials: prayer with tears, reading, compunction of heart and self-denial. A place like this brings out the single-pointed desire of the heart, and so we gladly follow the narrow way, the way of spiritual joy, the path that leads from death to life.
The Lenten desert, like the monastery, is a place of intensive care. What do I mean by this? Isn’t it a contradiction? What about all the fasting and self-denial, the call to do penance and to be converted? In today’s introit, God states his intent: “When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will rescue him and glorify him; with long life will I satisfy him.” Again, at Communion, we are assured: “He will overshadow you with his pinions, and you will find refuge under his wings. His faithfulness will encompass you with a shield.” God’s purpose in bringing us into the desert is to deliver us “with his strong hand and outstretched arm, with terrifying power, with signs and wonders; and [to bring] us into this country, … this land flowing with milk and honey” (Dt 26:8-9). In today’s Collect, we ask “that we may grow in understanding of the riches hidden in Christ.” Christ in the desert, hungry, weak, subject to temptation, reveals to us the source of our nourishment, strength and deliverance from evil. With him, we open ourselves to the intensive care of the Father. With him too, we open ourselves to become bearers of the cares of others, of the whole world – to become ourselves a place of nourishment where people can grow under the light of God’s gaze, a place of intensive care.
As we enter Lent this year, we carry with us a world in crisis, as well as the questions, desires, fears and uncertainties of our own hearts. At the close of the first part of our General Chapter, our new Abbot General, Dom Bernardus, offered us the gift of an image to encourage us on the way. The icon of Our Lady of Silence is a favorite of Pope Francis. He has placed it in a prominent place in the Vatican and emphasized the value of silence today as way into contemplation and a discipline of the tongue. It is striking that in this he echoes St Benedict’s teaching about the value of restraint of speech. In RB 6, the practice of silence is seen as a way of avoiding sin and as a good in itself: “there are times when good words are to be left unsaid out of esteem for silence. For all the more reason, then, should evil speech be curbed so that punishment for sin may be avoided” (RB 6.2). We were recently reminded in no uncertain terms by the Letter of James about the power of the tongue for good and for evil – it is a fire that sets the forest ablaze. “If anyone does not fall short in speech, he is a perfect man, able to bridle his whole body also” (Jam 3:2). We know this, we see the evidence in our own lives of the hurt caused by ill-considered words. Silence teaches us to reflect on the quality of our speech.
Dom Bernardus chose to focus on silence as listening. “The icon shows us that silence is the way to enter into the mystery of the encounter between God and man…. Silence, necessary for any authentic journey of oneness with the Lord, is much more than an ascetic tool.” His reverent pondering of the icon led him to see in the golden trim of Mary’s mantle a symbol of the way, the common road, the path into God’s future which opens up before us step by step, the way of God’s desire for us that becomes a reality when we walk in it. He says: “the ribbon, starting at the bottom of the image, goes up, down, continues invisible, reappears ... The right path is not entirely linear, easy, or clear: it will be necessary to trust, to follow, to let oneself be led.” Our intensive care, our seeking of a way forward for the world, the Church, our Order, our community, and our own lives, is not a matter of grasping at solutions or worrying ourselves into a frenzy. Our Lady of Silence teaches Dom Bernardus, and us, to stop, calm down and wait – to wait for the word to emerge from silence. From the silence of prayer and from the silence of an ear ever open to hear what is spoken, or whispered, or even just hinted at non-verbally, comes a word of hope.
I think it is important for us to keep the image of Our Lady of Silence before us on our Lenten journey, as well as these beautiful words heard from her mouth by our Abbot General: “When you no longer see how to continue on your life's path, when every chance seems lost, when your efforts seem to be in vain, then be silent. Let yourself be carried on by silence, let yourself be lifted up by love, without resistance, without interference of the tumult of your thoughts. Then you will find the way to follow and in it you will catch a glimpse of my face, and by following it you will radiate my peace.”
Image: Icon of Our Lady of Silence, by a Benedictine Nun