No time of year makes me homesick for the monastery more than Holy Week. Whatever sacrifices we made, whatever penances we practices, whatever prayers we said, they all culminated in the beauty found in Holy Week.
Of all those practices, prayers and penances, the one I miss most is the atmosphere of silence. Perhaps that is why I have never found Holy Week to be anything like the monastic practice. Maybe it was the silence that gave such a profound meaning to all we did on Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday.
Monastic silence was not the absence of words. It was not the refusal to speak or a hard distant quiet. Monastic silence was full of Presence, because it was borne of contemplation. It was not an absence of words, because the soul was in a conversation with God. Monastic silence was not void, not empty, not stark. That kind of silence has no fruit to give. Monastic silence was pregnant with inspirations and revelations.
In the monastery, these Holy Days were marked because they were days of profound silence, when no words were spoken. In such silence, the world of the spirit comes alive. Practicing this kind of silence teaches the soul how to commune with God. It teaches the senses to leap beyond the natural and into the spirit world.
Perhaps that is why the Gospel stories of the Passion depict Jesus and his disciples, and even his mother, all in silence. The only persons speaking are those determined to put Jesus to death. All the rest are silent. All the rest are watching.
Perhaps this silence was the disciples entry into a deeper spiritual commune with the God they thought they knew as Jesus. Perhaps this was Jesus way of helping them shed the concept they had of him as the Messiah ready to bring back the glory of the kingdom, and realize that the kingdom referred to their souls, not to their possessions.
Good Friday. Let us observe a period of silence. Let us let our souls speak in place of our tongues. Let us try to capture the wondrous atmosphere that teaches us spiritual truths.
No comments:
Post a Comment