The call to the monastic setting

The mystique of the monastic setting draws people. Have you ever questioned why? Is it the architecture, the place, the people? Partly. But much of the mysterious attraction we feel comes from something deeper inside of us, something that calls us to put our cares aside, and spend some time in just being.

I believe that attraction comes from the unique silence found in monasteries. We do not know this type of silence in our busy and noisy world, because this silence is more than a mere absence of noise. It is a silence born of wonder, of awe, of awareness of someone.  It permeates a monastic setting, filling its halls and fields with a divine presence.  We go to monasteries because we can “feel” that presence and hope to immerse ourselves in it. 

Having lived many years in a monastery, I can readily identify with this ardent longing. I used to go back to my own monastery once a year to make a retreat because I needed to steep myself in the atmosphere of quiet and prayer, in presence and awareness, in awe and beauty. I would slip down for night prayer, a time when all doors were locked and I would be the only one in chapel. I would quietly take my place and listen to the chanting of night prayer. And as I sat there, time would melt away and I could remember my many years of silence, of sitting in stillness. I would let presence fill my soul, and lift me up above myself.  It was a time I deeply cherished.

But I gradually learned, I need not go to a monastery to find that presence. I too can make a cell within my own soul, a place of solitude, silence and awe. I can pray in that space, and immerse myself in that silence, in memory, and in awareness. 

Jean-Marie Howe, in Secret of the Heart, speaks to the ability we have to immerse ourselves in living prayer, writing: This interior transformation, this birth of spiritual being that takes place silently and secretly, in the very heart of our obscurity…is no mere ideal to which one can aspire but a mystery that can become a reality. 

Who would not like to “own” a monastery garden, where one could sit and contemplate within the beauty and spirit of the monastics? Who would not like the freedom to visit such a monastery gardeny, and be lifted up by the spirit of the Divine. It is not that far away. It is within each heart, though the silence of wonder, the awe of consciousness, the practice of living prayer within the chapel of our own soul. God waits there for us. It is his call that makes our hearts long.