Witnesses to Silence and Stillness (I)
To close this series of reflections on silence, solitude and inner stillness, it seems most appropriate to share a few very modest, personal experiences that I have been blessed to undergo over the years. These involve encounters with unpretentious yet holy persons whose example can guide all of us who long to acquire these virtues or qualities for ourselves.
In the early 1970s a community of French Roman Catholic contemplative sisters invited our family to live among them as we made our entry into the Orthodox Church. These sisters were deeply imbued with Orthodox liturgical and ascetic tradition, to the point that many longed to become Orthodox themselves. My fondest memory of the three years we spent in their midst is of the evening Vespers services. A half hour or more before the office began, sisters and their guests began to enter the chapel. They venerated icons, then knelt on the rug and sat back on their heels to pray in the evening stillness. After the service, those who could do so remained. Again they knelt on the rough hemp rug, settled back on their heels, bowed their heads and prayed. The silence in that place was palpable.
I often wondered why it is that silence is so much deeper when it is shared with others. Why is our prayer so much more focused, so much more intense yet totally simple, when we join together in silent worship before the God of infinite love and compassion? How is it that in that silence our prayer encompasses one another in a unique way, so that, in unspoken harmony, we intercede for each other, give thanks for each other, and make offering of each other to the God whose presence and love we sense almost physically, God who is ever Emmanuel, God with us?
This kind of experience is a blessed gift, realized through the presence of the Spirit, who unites us before our Lord in thanksgiving, in supplication and in love. These sisters, and the group of brothers who later joined with them, blessed our lives beyond measure. Yet as I look back, I realize we hardly ever spoke to one another. We passed each other in that wilderness area where the community was located; we nodded and smiled; but we kept quiet, unless there was some specific need to speak. In the silence of the pathway, or of the refectory, or of the chapel, we heard the voice of God, as it were, through the silence of the other person. In that silence we exchanged the unspoken assurance that we were praying for one another. And in that silence I came to realize that holiness exists everywhere, that the “ecumenical problem” can be fully resolved there, where people, who love Christ and offer Him their unceasing adoration, gather in stillness, to worship together and to listen together for the voice of God.
A small Orthodox monastery on the island of Crete was home to a community of monks until they were slaughtered by invading Axis forces during the Second World War. Now a group of sisters lives and prays there. The grounds are filled with fruit trees and the natural beauty provides an ideal setting for shared words and shared silence. The tragic history of this community somehow enhances the sense of God’s presence, of His merciful providence that has created in this place of violence and death a haven of stillness and contemplative prayer. “Agathos ho Theos!” a sister calls out to me, “God is good!”
~Adapted from the Very Rev. John Breck, Life in Christ, Orthodox Church in America (oca.org), March 02, 2005