A Life Shaped by Silence
Every once in a while I am jolted into the reality that I am becoming my father. I do or say something, and in a flash, I see my father doing or saying the same thing. I noticed this is true of my brothers, Charlie and Chris as well. One day when I was visiting Chris, he did something. I don’t remember what, and I turned to my sister-in-law and said: Good grief, he reminds me of Dad. My sister-in-law looked at me, and said in reply: And you think he’s the ONLY one to remind people of your Dad?
So while I am becoming my father, I am also becoming someone else. Some days I think I am becoming Father Gross! Now there are many stories about Father Gross, and he’s famous, or perhaps infamous, for a number of things. One of the things which you could count on Father Gross saying, at some point in any conversation about the community, was: It’s not the Society I joined! When pushed, he was equally adamant that he had no interest in turning back the clock.
After nearly 30 years in the community, I am very aware that this is NOT the Society I joined, in 1989, and like Father Gross, I have no interest in turning back the clock. But while many of the details of our life are different today, the fundamental principles are unchanged. One of those unchanging principles is silence. While there is perhaps not as much silence as there once was (it’s NOT the Society I joined!) our life is still shaped by silence. And I think that’s a good thing.
When I announced to my family and friends that I wanted to test my vocation as a monk, there was immediate concern that I was going behind some mythical monastic wall, never to be seen or to speak again. They were concerned about the vow of silence I would be taking. (Some days I wish!) It was hard to explain to them that I wasn’t taking a vow of silence, but more difficult to explain that silence, as the community understood it, was not a negative, but a positive. In our tradition, silence isn’t so much the absence of something, but the presence of something else. We are silent, not to prevent conversation or communication, but to enhance listening. As such our life is shaped by silence, not because we are trying to prevent something, but because we are trying to enhance something. In a sense we could just as easily speak of a life shaped by listening, as we can a life shaped by silence, and my family would have immediately understood, and even accepted, a vow of listening as a positive, and not the negative withdrawal from life, which is what they feared.
We speak in our Rule of Life about this connection between silence and listening. We say: Our ministries demand silence for their integrity, in particular our speaking to others and our listening to them in Christ’s name. Without silence words become empty. Without silence our hearts would find the burdens, the secrets and the pain of those we seek to help intolerable and overwhelming. And our ethos of silence is itself a healing gift to those who come to us seeking newness of life.[1] The Rule teaches that in order to listen, to really listen, we must first be silent, because listening demands silence. Earlier in that same chapter we say: without this constant opening of the heart to silence alone and together, we are unable to feel the touch or hear the word of God.[2] I would say that is true also of our own hearts, as well as the hearts of another. Without silence, we cannot hear our own hearts, or the hearts of another, as they seek God’s healing touch in our presence.
So for us, Brothers, silence is a posture of humility. We keep silence, not because we have nothing to say, because most of us have a lot to say on any number of things. We keep silence for the simple reason, we are not God. Because we have come here to live for God,[3] all that we do is a step along that path, and helping others to walk the same path. We cannot walk this path toward God, if we first haven’t discovered the grace of humility. We express it this way in the Rule: the gift of silence we seek to cherish is chiefly the silence of adoring love for the mystery of God which words cannot express. In silence we pass through the bounds of language to lose ourselves in wonder. In this silence we learn to revere ourselves also; since Christ dwells in us we too are mysteries that cannot be fathomed, before which we must be silent until the day we come to know as we are known. In silence we honor the mystery present in the hearts of our brothers and sisters, strangers and enemies. Only God knows them as they truly are, and in silence we learn to let go of the curiosity, presumption and condemnation that pretend to penetrate the mystery of their hearts.[4] Our silence then, is a humble recognition that we stand in the presence of the Divine, and like Moses, we must remove our shoes for this is holy ground.[5]
Our silence is also a posture of hesitancy. People come here seeking healing and renewal, as a gift of God. The healing and renewal that many find here, is not a gift that comes to them from us. It is a gift from God. It is simply our blessing to be witnesses of the actions of God the Holy Spirit in their lives. When we speak, we do so, not from our own wisdom, but from the wisdom God has given us, for as our Rule reminds us: ministry itself will draw out from us gifts, insights and strengths that we never knew we had.[6] Because the words we speak are God’s words, and not ours, we must be cautious, careful, even hesitant, to speak, because to speak in God’s name is a thing filled with awe.
We live in a world filled with noise. Much of that noise comes because people have forgotten that words, and tweets, and posts, have the power to hurt, and harm, and even kill. They have forgotten, or never knew, that speaking demands listening, and listening demands silence, and silence demands humility and hesitancy.
Our life is shaped by silence, not because we have nothing to say, but because we have everything to say, and what we say is in response to the God who speaks and dwells within us. To speak of, and on behalf of God, is a thing of wonder and awe, and it demands of us humility and hesitancy. Our life then is shaped by silence, and from that silence comes the voice of God speaking words of hope, and healing, and life. To be ministers of such words is to pull back the veil of heaven, which we must do in fear and trembling, lest the words we speak are ours, and not the words of the Author of Life.
One of a series of addresses given by James Koester SSJE to the Brothers of The Society of Saint John the Evangelist at the Friday morning Eucharist in the Monastery Chapel. Originally given on 1 December 2017.
[1] SSJE, Rule of Life, Silence, chapter 27, page 55
[2] Ibid., page 55
[3] Benson, Richard Meux, The Religious Vocation, Of the Objects of the Society, chapter 1, page 37
[4] Op. cit., page 54
[5] Exodus 3: 5
[6] SSJE, Rule, The Spirit of Mission and Service, chapter 32, page 65