On Monasticism and Silence

On Monday afternoon, Liz and I had one of our friends over for coffee and dessert. It was gray and rainy outside (as it has been all week) so it was the perfect day to settle in and just catch up. This particular friend of ours, a woman of beautiful faith, shared with us her process of discernment. If all goes according to plan, she will be entering the Poor Clare convent in Alexandria come January. During the course of the afternoon, she shared how she had slowly become aware of this amazing calling. Through years of discernment, God slowly but surely revealed His love for her, calling her to enter into a deeper relationship with Him in the contemplative life.

Sitting there, listening to her witness to God's love by revealing her own life, a profound sense of peace came over me. Through her experience, I was entering into the silence that God is currently calling her towards. Images of cloisters, monastic gardens, nuns at chant, adoration - all filled my mind. And, at the center of everything, was the Bridegroom.

The silence of the monastery or convent is meant for one thing: the deepening of the relationship with Jesus. The beauty, the austerity, all of these things are ordered to union with Christ. These places, these antechambers of Heaven, are literally meeting rooms between God and man. The contemplative life offers man a chance to once again walk in the garden with God. The struggles of community life and the dryness that these souls undergo serve as a desert of intimacy. The contemplative life is one filled with the greatest beauty and also often the greatest desolation.

So, as I was sitting there listening to our friend running towards such a life, I began to reflect on the one that Liz and I have been called to. The active life, as lived out in the sacrament of marriage, seems to be so different. It is one, especially in today's world, that seems to be filled with so much noise. We run here, we run there, fulfilling the various duties of day to day life. We work to carve out time each day for prayer, for reflection, and we battle to keep the day's concerns away during this time. However, they seem to rush back onto our minds with astounding vigor.

Though we don't have the same silence and beauties of monastic life, our lives are filled with their own particular blessings. For one, we have been given each other. We have been blessed with one another as spouses to live and share our lives together until our deaths. For another blessing, we have been given a son, Alan, who is such a great joy. We are given the opportunities to sacrifice for him, to watch him grow and develop, and as the years go on we will be able to introduce him to Jesus Christ. There are so many blessings to the active married life - friends, family, hobbies, and even work.

Of these two lives, though, one is assuredly higher, for in the contemplative life man is called to direct union with God. Of course, we are still called to union with God in the active life, but the contemplative life offers opportunities for union that simply cannot be had in the active life. The contemplative life, though, should inform and instruct the active life. What I mean is, for those of us in the active life, we should learn from the monks and nuns who lock themselves up in order to give themselves completely to God.

In particular, as men and women called to the active live we need to engender an interior silence. We need to set off part of our souls for the worship of God. This means turning off music and televisions some times and allowing our selves to be surrounded by silence. Exterior silence helps engender interior silence. These periods of silence should be part of our day as well. Yes, it is good to be silent when in Church, but we should also be practicing silence at other times during the day (especially in the morning, if possible). Silence is essential to the life of the monk and cloistered nun, and it is a lesson from the contemplative life that should not be lost on those in the active.

If more Christians looked to the monks for an example of how to love Christ, I believe the Church would quickly catch the world on fire. I pray that the example of the monks, those silent martyrs, might enkindle in the hearts of the Church a renewed intimacy with Our Lord Jesus.