We should not only avoid idle talk [leading to] much laughter, as St Benedict says, but we are also invited to avoid noisy behavior. Our constitution mentions noisy manual work, disturbances during liturgical celebrations, and during the time of rest. Our constitution recommends silence in the church…”Indiscrete turning of the pages, coughing and impolite yawning should be avoided.”
There are many ways of making noise. In my experience, I remember two brothers who left the motor of the tractor running outside of the door of the garage. Sometimes this kind of noise lasted for more than a half hour without reason. Others slam doors, Abbot Delatte, in his commentary on St Benedict’s Rule, tells us that “a nun of the Visitation order asked St Francis de Sales what she should do to reach perfection. The holy bishop, who doubtless know whom he was addressing replied: ‘Sister, I think Our Lord wants you to close doors quietly.’”
Let us try to avoid all unnecessary noise, all impatient and distracting movements in whatever we do.
…..
“Jesus autem tacebat.” “But Jesus was silent.” Jesus was arrested and brought before the Sanhedrin. There He was falsely accused. St Matthew says: “The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for evidence against Jesus, however false, on which they might pass the death sentence.” How did our Lord answer His accusers? St Matthew tells us: “Jesus was silent.”
May the silence of Jesus be our example and our inspiration. Let us follow the silent Master of whom Isaiah foretold: “harshly dealt with, he bore it humbly, he never opened his mouth, like a lamb that is led to the slaughterhouse, never opening its mouth.” –Silence: A Series of Conferences Given by a Camaldolese Hermit
In the entry room, Silvester looked at Arseny, questioning. Arseny knew that look very well but had not seen it before on a child. He could not fathom what he should say to a child who wore that look.
Things look bad, you know (Arseny turned away). I feel pained that I cannot save her.
But you saved the princess, said the boy. Save her, too.
Everything is in God’s hand.
You know, for God, it would be such an easy thing to heal her. It is very simple, Arseny. Let us pray to Him together.
Let us. But I do not want you to blame Him if she dies anyway. Remember: she is likely to die.
You want us to ask Him but not believe that He will grant this for us?
Arseny kissed the boy on the forehead.
No. Of course not.
Arseny made a bed for Silvester in the entryway and said, you will sleep here.
Yes, but we will pray first, said Silvester.
Arseny went to the room and brought out the icons of the Savior, His Virgin Mother, and the great martyr and healer Panteleimon. He took to dippers off a shelf and put the icons in their place. He and the boy knelt. They prayed for a long time. When Arseny finished reciting prayers to the Savior, Silvester tugged at his sleeve.
Wait, I want to say it in my own words. (He pressed his forehead to the floor, which made his voice sound more muffled.) Lord, let my mother live. I need nothing else in the world. At all. I will give thanks to you for centuries. You know, after all, that if she dies I will be left all alone. (He looked out from under his arm at the savior.) With no help.
Silvester did not fear for himself when he informed the Savior of these possible consequences: he thought of his mother and chose the weightiest argument in favor of her return to health. He hoped he could not be refused. And Arseny saw that. He believed the Savior saw it, too.
Then they prayed to the Mother of God. Arseny glanced back when he did not hear Silvester’s voice. Still kneeling, Silvester slept, leaning against a storage chest. Arseny carefully carried him to the bed and prayed, now alone, to the healer Panteleimon. At around midnight, he went in to begin taking care of Kesniya. Eugene Vodolazkin ‘Laurus’
Last night, after midnight, I read the last lines of Laurus, a newly translated Russian novel by Eugene Vodolazkin, and thought it surely must be the most perfect ending ever. There is no way it could have ended any more perfectly or profoundly. And then I did what I have done nearly every time I’ve put this astonishing novel down over the last few days: I picked up my chotki (prayer rope) and prayed, as I was first taught to do in an Orthodox parish in the Russian tradition.
What kind of novel makes you want to enter into contemplative prayer after reading from its pages? I’ve never heard of one. But Laurus is that kind of novel. It induces an awareness of the radical enchantment of the world, and of the grandeur of the soul’s journey through this life toward God. It is so strange and mystical and … well, to call a novel “holy” is too much, but Laurus conjures on every page an awareness of holiness that is without precedence in my experience as a reader. Holiness illuminates this novel like an icon lamp.
A simple strange novel reviewed well. The Russian influence continues to pervade my life. Visiting the Lakewood Library, accompanied by the significant other, we happenstanced upon a musical show of a Russian folk musician, Oleg Kruglyakov, playing his balalaika. The delightful man of simple charming disposition astounded with his skill upon the peasant three stringed instrument. Wonderfully entertained, we sat mesmerized by the stories of Russia, the instrument, and the background of the songs Oleg played. The show complimented the powerful sacred performance of The Passion of John we witnessed the previous evening by the Cleveland Orchestra at Severance Hasll. Unfortunately, Oleg’s piano partner from Cleveland Heights was not there for the afternoon performance, although he did have taped accompaniment with her. I spoke with the amiable man after the performance, sharing my new found love of Russian smoked salmon with him. He vows to visit the Cleveland Heights Russian deli and meet his countrymen I praised so highly. Enjoy the video, this man is a treasure, embodying the simple, while profound, heartwarming depth I am encountering in the novel Laurus.
In our thirteen preceding conferences we tried to bring order to our interior faculties and to our intellect itself. We spoke about our external senses, which are, as it were, five doors leading to our soul. We spoke of the memory and our imagination, the interior senses, which can be a help to our intellect but can also become a great obstacle. All the mentioned faculties must be brought to the right order. A silence should be imposed on deviations and care should be taken that they do not become a hindrance or an obstacle in our spiritual life. Our intellect also must submit to Christian ascesis and discipline. It must be illuminated by faith. Let us also remember that from our intellect to our will, a long road is often the division. A Latin poet—Ovid expressed what I’m saying in the following verse: “Video Meliora, proboque, deteriora sequor.” It means: I see better things and approve them, but I follow the less good ones (or the worst, if you wish).
…..
Perfect silence in ourselves is the fruit of many sacrifices, of a long period of suffering, and of many tears and prayers.
Perfect silence is the sign of the final victory of Christ’s power in our life. It is a great interior silence to which we are called—a silence filled with God. –Silence: A series of Conferences Given by a Camaldolese Hermit.
Saturday morning relaxing, bed lounging reading: Archbishop Charles Chaput’s ‘Strangers in a Strange Land: Living the Catholic Faith in a Post-Christian World’ and Eugene Vodolazkin’s ‘Laurus’, while holding close upon the covers a short collection on Silence from a conference held by Camaldolese Hermits in Bloomingdale, Ohio. A scriptural quote from the back of the hermit book: The Lord is good to those who expect Him, to the soul that seeketh Him. It is good to wait in silence for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth. Let him sit in solitude and silence, when He has laid it upon him. Let him put his mouth to the dust. There may yet be hope. Lamentations 3:25-29. The Laurus novel is a strange Russian story of a young boy growing in medieval times. Prone to superstition, a lack of scientific knowledge, religious misunderstanding, as well as religious fervor, a keen mind, and pestilence, the orphan boy is raised and taught by his grandfather, a healer familiar with herbs and traditional ways of confronting physical ailments. The grandfather is advised by an elder monk to take up his abode next to the local cemetery. Due to the plague and an abundance of empty homes, the obedient grandfather/healer lays claim to a comfortable home bordering the cemetery, a rail fence the only thing between the home and the resting place of the deceased. Advancing in companionship, love, and learning, the boy loses his grandfather as he grows into his teenage years. Without his grandfather, the boy understands he is alone in the world, grappling while accepting. Neighbors—patients and friends, offer the boy their home, yet he refuses, comprehending he could never abandon his grandfather’s home for it has become his home. It is his grounding point upon the earth. There is no place else he could go. He instinctively and efficiently takes over his grandfather’s role as a healer, making a reputation for himself for having comforting hands, the ability to lay his hands upon people and ease their burdens. I am locked into the novel at place where the solitary boy growing into a man has gotten himself stuck in a serious conundrum. A ragged fellow orphan entered his world. One night, desperate eyes emerged from the dark forest begging for food. The boy offered the soft voice the comfort of his home, as well as food, yet the girl’s voice refused, warning him her village was wiped out by the plague. She explained she was not worthy to enter anyone’s home, and even more if others learned she entered his home it would be condemned. She warned him if others knew who she was she would be killed and her body burned. She begged the boy to leave the food beyond the edge of his fire so she could retrieve it unseen and disappear. The boy immediately walked to the girl and brought her to his fire, recognizing she was a small famished red head child. He took the girl into his home, allowing her to bath, and afterwards feeding her, unable to take himself away from her once she fell asleep with food remaining before her. Putting her to bed upon a wooden bench, the boy sat with the sleeping girl, and while sleeping she brought him into her embrace. The boy fell asleep next to her, waking to the moist touch of tears. Awake, the girl was staring at him, crying. Blushing, he tried to remove himself from her, yet she protested, telling him he was all she had. Fearfully, the boy would take the girl into his grandfather’s home, hiding her from everyone lest they discover her origin. An unrelenting panic subtly overwhelmed his waking moments that he would lose his girl. He shunned the church, the receiving of communion, becoming distant and absent minded in his duties as a healer, convinced he could not share with anyone the love of his life. I have reached a point in the simple fictional story in which the girl has become pregnant, urging the boy to take her as his wife. The boy declares he loves her above all things, that she is already his wife. For the first time, the girl challenges him, declaring that his secret and possessive love is not enough. She wanted to be his wife before God, the church, and all people. The Russian story blends in well with my recent immersion within Russian culture, now evolving with the branching out of the Hungarian filmmaker Bela Tarr, immersed within his film ‘The Turin Horse’, a strange tale breaking off from the incident of Nietzsche falling into madness after an encounter with a peasant man beating his horse. The film is a brutal tale of existence, a metaphysical blustery visual meditation on the harshness of life for a father and his obedient daughter. The father is the owner and thrasher of the horse that ignited the curse of madness onto Nietzsche. The story reflected upon my mind the Biblical old woman raising her grandson who Elijah came upon begging food. “As surely as the LORD your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any bread–only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it–and die.” Elijah would compassionately be moved, endlessly filling the woman’s jars with bread and oil, saving her son. The reading time and musing time comes conveniently through the blessing of no work for two days. Following a Saturday early morning Mass and Holy Hour at St Dominic. A prayer from the session:
O Eucharist, source of charity made present at every Mass, form me into your image and into the image of your saints. Open in my soul, “in spirit and truth,” a real and unfathomable love that seeks to grasp your sacrifice. May I see in your sacrifice love, and may I respond to it in love. May I not only know love, but may I begin to love as you love. May I walk along the path of love that you have set before me, the path of progress, of development, of deep and strong growth. May I see in your Eucharistic presence my most authentic and deepest Christian vocation of perfecting the image and likeness I was meant to be like, the image and likeness of you O Lord. Help me to be a sign of unity and a bond of charity in a world so hostile, cold, and distant. O sacrament of love, help me to fulfill the commandment of love of God and neighbor. O Eucharist, source of charity made present at every Mass, form me into your image and the image of your saints. Amen.
The woman orchestrating the Holy Hour establishes herself as a blessing; a distant, silent, beautiful woman providing companionship. Her smile and nod of the head is properly invigorating, a sharing worthy to look forward to once a week. It is enough. I left work last night feeling confident, humble and proud. I received an hourly raise of seventy-five cents last week, retroactive to the start of the year. Providing nourishing pride, I am comprehending I am worth the money, standing behind my performance and who I am. Something transforms inside, grace providing, allowing a strength within the lack of clarity regarding the future. The significant other, although the term is used respectively and tenderly, is returning as a companion. I am proud of her. Over the last two weeks she conducted a Master Cleanse, fasting for ten plus days, demonstrating discipline and the corresponding consequences. Furthermore, a brutal honesty emerged allowing a bottoming out, a confrontation of a momentous personal shortcoming demanding reparation. Without the acknowledgement of hitting a bottom, we are only prone to fall deeper into another bottom. There are always bottoms beneath every bottom. We can spend a lifetime descending to lower and lower bottoms. The only thing bottomless is death. I am honored to assist in her immense progress, inspired by her acquired devotion to Our Lady Undoer of Knots. A comforting companion, able to share in enriching entertainment, she has attained tickets through her employment for the Cleveland Orchestra tonight at Severance Hall, a performance of Bach’s ‘St John Passion’, with a preceding lecture on the work. Our first experience at Severance Hall proved a meditative splendor with the enjoyment of the choral and musical piece ‘Sabet Mater’. I expect nothing the less this evening. Regarding companionship, the erroneous thought was placed before me that my recent struggle was to be a means of stagnation and the continuation of destructive ways. Unable to even confront, weary of debating on levels that continually prove fruitless, I trust in patience and the grace of love to penetrate unknown regions. Where there has been a shattering of trust, commitment, and devotion, the wreckage and ruin are only emptiness calling for the imagination to dally within nonsense. I will only receive frustration pursuing. When there was never the formation of trust, commitment, and devotion—a selfish void filling—when such holy things were properly laid before one, when these virtues were never advanced upon, rejected and refused, it is only obvious a delusion and inability to receive grace exist. Regarding the latest, when there is such a misconception of truth, a severe lack of insight, a clear demonstration one cannot be open and willing—desiring to see through the eyes of God, then everything seems futile, an inevitable clash awaiting. When grace is not providing understanding, sincerity is not enough.
1. Forget past sins. (Growth, acceptance, silence within self-awareness)
2. Ease thinking of past injuries. (Maturity, reception, silence within aging)
3. Remember benefits from God.
4. Consider motives for Christian hope. (Eternal life)
Remember benefits received from God, recommends Father Aumann in his Spiritual Theology. The recollection of the immense benefits we have received from God, of the times He has pardoned our faults, of the dangers from which He has preserved us, of the loving care He has exercised over us, is an excellent means of arousing our gratitude toward Him and the desire of corresponding more faithfully with His graces. And if to this we add the remembrance of our disobedience and rebellion, of our ingratitude and resistance to grace, our soul will be filled with humility and confusion. We will experience the need for redoubling vigilance and efforts to be better in the future. As we can see, we should not remember our past sins with all their details, still less nourish our memory with the dalliance of our imagination (fantasizing). It will only expose new temptations and thus new sins. But we should have a deep interior compunction for all sins we ever committed. It would not be an exaggeration to say that we will grow in the spiritual life in proportion to our compunction of heart. We pray in Psalm 50, “A humbled, contrite heart you will not spurn.” (Compunction: feeling of uneasiness or anxiety of the conscience caused by regret for doing wrong or causing pain; contrition; remorse.)
Speaking about memory Father Aumann invites us to consider motives for Christian hope. It is one of the most efficacious means for directing our memory to God and for purifying it of contact with earthly things. St John of the Cross makes our memory the seat of Christian hope. The saint declares growth in the theological virtue of hope effectively purges the memory. The remembrance of an eternity of happiness, which is the central object of Christian hope, is most apt for making us disdain the things of earth and causing us to raise our spirits to God.
In conclusion of what has been said today, I would like to repeat that our memory is a precious gift from our God and should serve for a good purpose. It should help us to become good Christians and to grow in the spiritual life. If our memory does not help us to come closer to God, but rather makes it more difficult, our memory needs purification. Many things should be brought to absolute silence. There exist an active and passive purification of our senses and our spirit. God has His own way of purifying our senses and our minds. He permits dryness and deprives us of all consolation. He permits great temptations against faith, hope, and charity; also, against patience and peace of soul. Little by little, we become detached from ourselves and from earthly pleasures, and come closer to God and are ready for higher contemplation. Please God that we may be strong, generous, and patient during God’s work of purification in ourselves. Please God that we enjoy, with His help, perfect silence in all our senses, both internal and external, but also in our intellectual faculties. Bring to silence all that is not from God or conducive to God. Then we will be ready for greater union with Christ, for greater contemplation, and love of God. Amen.
Father Aumann, in ‘Spiritual Theology‘ continues: “There are two principal obstacles caused an uncontrolled imagination: dissipation and temptation. Without recollection an interior life and a life of prayer are impossible, and there is nothing that so impedes recollection as the inconstancy and dissipation of the imagination. Freed of any restraints, it paints in vivid colors the pleasure sin provides for the concupiscible appetite or exaggerates the difficulty the irascible appetite will encounter on the road of virtue, thus leading to discouragement. But the difficulties can be avoided if we use the proper means.”
Father Aumann enumerates four means to avoid the above mentioned dangers of seeking illicit pleasure and of discouragement. What are these beneficial means?
1. Custody of the external senses. 2. Prudent selection of reading material (entertainment: internet, films, music, socializing). 3. Attention to the duty of the moment. 4. Indifference to distractions
St Bernard says, that in the exercise of mortification, we must always carry the hook in our hands; and that there is no person, no matter how mortified, who stands not in need of pruning or retrenching something or other. “Believe me,” says he, “that which is cut out, sprouts anew; that which is cast away returns; that which is extinct takes fire again; and that which appears asleep awakes upon a sudden. It is not sufficient therefore, adds the saint, “to have pruned once, we must cut it often, and even daily if possible; for if you will not deceive yourself, you’ll always find something to cut, and to retrench within yourself.” The hedges which we see in gardens furnish us with a very fit comparison for this subject. The myrrh and the box are cut with so much art, that here they represent the figure of a lion, there that of an eagle, and also a variety of other figures. But if the gardener be not very careful to cut off the leaves and little branches, which shootout every moment, in a very short time, we shall not see the form of an eagle, nor of a lion, nor of anything else; because nature continually, according to its custom, shoots forth new wood and leaves. The same happens here; though you should be a lion or an eagle; though you seem to yourself so strong, as to fear nothing; nevertheless, if you do not daily cut and retrench something by mortification, you will soon become like a monster without shape; because the root of the evil, which is within us, shoots forth branches every moment; so that there is always something to be mortified within us. “Whatever progress you may have made in virtue,” says St Bernard, “you deceive yourself, if you believe you have entirely destroyed all vices within you; for you have only brought them under, and whether you will or not, the Jebusite will always remain with you. It is an enemy you may overcome, but you’ll never be able to exterminate.” “I know,” says St Paul, “that there is nothing good within me, that is to say within my flesh.” And the same saint discoursing upon these words, says, that the apostle had said very little, if he had not presently added, that sin made its abode in him; saying, “I do not the good which I would do, but execute the evil I would not. But if I do what I would not, then it is not I that do it, but it is sin that dwells within me.” “Wherefore, hereafter,” adds the saint, “you must either prefer yourself to the apostle, or else acknowledge with him, that you are not exempt from vice.” –Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez ‘The Practice of Christian & Religious Perfection II’
A continual lifelong chant: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, forgive me for I am a sinner.
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