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St Benedict understood
that silence is an essential element of monastic
life. This is so that we can learn to listen to God
more acutely. God speaks to us in the Bible, but
also in the depths of our heart and, as we begin
to tune into him, we learn to be attentive to his
presence in others. |
This
kind of sensitivity and awareness makes it easier
to pray at all times. So a monk seeks to practise
a considerable degree of silence and recollection.
In Benedictine life, there are times of silence (especially
during the night) and there are places, such as a
monk’s cell (his room), the library, the garden,
the cloister and the church, where he will be able
to discover the solitude which is typical of monastic
life.
It can seem a busy life,
but it is a measured life; and to balance hard work
a monk needs time and space to be on his own. More
than that, a monk lives off silence, and a sign of
a vocation to the monastic life is the ability to
take to it and create it. The earliest monks went
into the desert so that their lives could be dominated
by this sense of God. In the Bible the desert is
the place where God met his people and made them
his own. It is also the place where Christ was tempted,
and a monk has to face up to everything in himself
which would try to stand in the place where God belongs.
People may sometimes feel lonely, but instead of
running away, a monk tries to find the place in his
heart where he can find God. There is a world of
difference between loneliness and solitude with God.
Silence
also helps build up a healthy community life in the
monastery. What binds us together as a human fellowship
is the knowledge that we are each trying to answer
to God's call to seek him. Listening to each other
helps us understand and support each other. It is
a way of learning reverence for God's presence in
every other human being.
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