LAST WEEK I had the opportunity of seeing a unique film, Into Great Silence, directed by the German Philip Gröning. The film is a documentary about the life of the Carthusian monks of Grand Chartreuse in the mountains near Grenoble, France.
The director has subtitled his masterwork: a meditation on life and a contemplation of time, silence, repetition and rhythm. The film is, in fact, bound to become a classic among spiritual people of every religion and seekers of all stripes.
The distinguishing feature of the movie is that in the 167 minutes of scenes unfolding before our eyes, there is little more than two minutes of dialogue. 'What a bore,' you may be tempted to say, but the surprise is that the natural sounds of monastic life - tolling bells, chants, prayers and the lighting of candles - effectively captures the rhythm of the monks' routine, and our attention along with it! Without the benefit of a voice-over, the viewer is left to take in the director's breathtaking images and to ponder what it is like to live a life of utter religious devotion.
Much to everyone's surprise, in Germany the film has fast become a box office success, revealing the great need for silence and spirituality in our world.
Recent studies have highlighted how, in the last hundred years, humanity has lost about 20 percent of it's hearing capacity. The continuous roar of background noise coming from the crowd, the traffic, the radio and television batters our poor ear drums continuously during the day, and sometimes at night too.
Another recent study has revealed how 20 percent of the population in the European Union (but the situation must be largely the same in North America) are exposed to noise levels well above the 65 decibels limit set by safety standards, because any big city with a normal traffic averages noise levels of 75 decibels.
We are therefore surrounded by a lot of destructive noise, but we have become so used to it that silence now frightens us. We are unable to live without the absence of noise, because we have come to experience that absence as a deprivation, as an absence of experiences, feelings, thoughts and intentions; in short, as a death-like experience.
In reality, silence is the womb out of which all life and beauty arises. It is the well-spring of all creation. Music, which is the opposite of noise, is constituted by a succession of silences between notes. It is never the notes themselves which are perceived, but the contrast between the notes and the silence. Music is, therefore, rhythmical silence.
In his Apostolic letter Spiritus et Sponsa (The Spirit and the Bride) our late pontiff wrote, 'One aspect that we must foster in our communities with greater commitment is the experience of silence. We need silence 'if we are to accept in our hearts the full resonance of the voice of the Holy Spirit, and to unite our personal prayer more closely to the Word of God and the public voice of the Church'. In a society that lives at an increasingly frenetic pace, often deafened by noise and confused by the ephemeral, it is vital to rediscover the value of silence. The spread, also outside Christian worship, of practices of meditation that give priority to recollection is not accidental. Why not start with pedagogical daring a specific education in silence within the coordinates of personal Christian experience? Let us keep before our eyes the example of Jesus, who 'rose and went out to a lonely place, and there he prayed' (Mk 1: 35). The Liturgy, with its different moments and symbols, cannot ignore silence.'
It is only in silence that God's voice can be heard, and it is only when our words to Him are proffered in meditative silence that He will hear us. In silence the 'bride' (our poor souls) can abandon herself totally to Him, and find the strength to accomplish (often without fully understanding why) all that which is infused in her. This is the way in which God inspires us to accomplish those little, but great works of faith.
Let us therefore welcome and seek those precious moments of silence in our lives. Let us carve out for ourselves moments in which to meditate, remember, and reorder our core beliefs and goals. To feel God's gaze upon oneself means to allow this contemplative attitude to sink into our lives, even in the midst of practical life.
Updated on October 06 2016