Today’s Chapter: Our Lady of Silence
Chapter 6: Of the Practice of Silence
Let us do as saith the prophet: “I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue, I have placed a watch over my mouth; I became dumb and was silent, and held my peace even from good things.” Here the prophet sheweth that if we ought at times to refrain even from good words for the sake of silence, how much more ought we to abstain from evil words, on account of the punishment due to sin.
Therefore, on account of the importance of silence, let leave to speak be seldom granted even to perfect disciples, although their conversation be good and holy and tending to edification; because it is written: “In much speaking thou shalt not avoid sin”; and elsewhere: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” For it becometh the master to speak and to teach, but it beseemeth the disciple to be silent and to listen. And therefore, if anything has to be asked of the Superior, let it be done with all humility and subjection of reverence. But as for buffoonery or idle words, such as move to laughter, we utterly condemn them in every place, nor do we allow the disciple to open his mouth in such discourse.
It is not difficult to see the Marian implications of this chapter of the Holy Rule. Madre Cànopi devotes a chapter to this subject, connecting it also to parts of Chapter 7 and Chapter 68:
After having presented obedience as the principal hallmark of the disciple of Christ, Saint Benedict presents silence as his interior habit. If the former drives him to run at every indication of the will of God, the latter recollects him within himself, in attentive meditative listening to the Word, in order to make his own the thoughts and sentiments of the divine Master.
In Saint Benedict’s teaching—as it appears in particular from chapters 6 and 7 of the Rule—silence is the expression of what is essential, of humility and of obedience; it is the sign of God’s presence and the principle of true human and spiritual maturity; its fruit is a total and respectful welcoming of the other, in whom, by faith, it sees the Lord. It is proper to the ‘disciple’, who feels the need to remain listening to the Master; it is proper to the ‘servant’, attentive to receive the dispositions of His Lord; it is proper to the ‘son’, who loves the will of the Father. Knowing himself to be a sinner on the path of conversion, the monk must learn silence, as he must learn humility and obedience, because it is precisely silence that is the interior space for receiving all the virtues.
By means of a wise interlacing of biblical citations and practical experiences, Saint Benedict in his Rule offers the disciple a secure guide for acquiring true silence; he opens for him a level pathway, already traveled by so many monks and, above all, by the queen of monks, the Virgin Mary, who more than anyone was a docile disciple, servant, and daughter of her divine Son.
Chapter 6 of the Rule begins with a very demanding citation of Psalm 39 [Vulgate Ps. 38]: ‘I was silent and was humbled, I avoided even speaking about good things’. Silence is such a high value that, to preserve it, it is good to refrain even from speaking of ‘things good, holy, and such as edify’ (cf. v. 3): ‘to speak and to teach is the master’s task; to be silent and to listen belongs to the disciple’ (cf. v. 6). Who was more a disciple than Mary?
In these expressions we find, without any difficulty, her attitude: from Nazareth to Calvary and then beyond, when she lived and guarded in a climate of interior and exterior silence the entire drama of her crucified Son; a creature of silence, entirely attentive and intent on God, she had no words to say about herself or about others. At the moment of the annunciation, the angel finds in her that profound silence which becomes the cradle of the Word. Although deeply troubled, Mary does not give space to her thoughts, but ‘with all humility and respectful submission’ (v. 7), she asks the angel ‘how’ what he announces will be able to happen. Having received the mysterious response, she pronounces her ‘yes’ , entirely founded on faith in God’s omnipotence. Mary is the good soil where the seed of the Word is not suffocated by useless preoccupations, because where there is faith, there is peace; it is not carried away by the enemy, because it is guarded by the angel and by watchful silence; it does not dry up, because it is well rooted in the soil of humility. In her the divine seed bears superabundant fruit of life: the blessed Fruit.
How many ‘beautiful and good’ things she could have told us about the newborn Jesus, but how stupendous is her silence at Bethlehem, while the angels of Heaven and all around her magnify God! Her adoring contemplation renders her particularly a model for monks: ‘The Virgin’s destiny’, says Pierre de Bérulle, ‘is that of remaining in silence. It is her condition, her way, her life. Seeing before her eyes, in her arms, the Word Himself reduced to silence by the condition of His Infancy, the Virgin is recollected in a new silence, where she is transformed.’ (Pierre de Bérulle, Works of piety, 38.3) Just so, in an analogous way, it should happen for monks. (Anna Maria Cànopi, Nel ‘Sì’ di Maria, pp. 41-43)
As we accompany Our Lord on this Thursday in his Eucharistic silence, we ask Our Lady, honoured today as Our Lady of Ransom and Our Lady of Walsingham, to obtain for us by her maternal mediation a deeper share in the silence that she lived with her Son.