Today’s Chapter: Heroic Silence
Chapter 7: Of Humility (v. 56-58)
The ninth degree of humility is, that a monk refrain his tongue from speaking, keeping silence until a question be asked him, as the Scripture sheweth: “In much talking thou shalt not avoid sin”: and, “The talkative man shall not be directed upon the earth.”
The 9th through 11th Degrees of Humility are all related to Chapter 6 on Silence, or rather on ‘Taciturnity’: first, knowing when not to speak, then, knowing when not to laugh, and finally, being able to speak gently and reasonably. As we earlier considered Mary as Our Lady of Silence, so she is the model for us in these three degrees which grow out of the interior conviction of humility which recognizes that we are nothing, that our own thoughts and feelings are not the centre of the universe, and therefore that our voice need not dominate the space in which we live.
Madre Cànopi comments on Mary’s silence as the model for monastic life. Her words are addressed in particular to nuns, but they have relevance for all monks as well:
In the crowd which follows and listens to Jesus, Mary hides herself as a disciple among the disciples and, journeying behind her Son, from Him and with Him she learns the heroic silence which will allow her to persevere unto the end, unto the cross, facing with faith the supreme hour of Calvary. There, while the disciples give themselves up to flight, she ‘stands’: she remains firm, as if she too were nailed to the cross, entrusting her Son and herself into the hands of the Father. All the Church’s hope on Good Friday is gathered up in her Mother’s heart and remains there well guarded until the dawn of the Resurrection.
This indomitable hope, which the Church today expressly asks for and expects from the monastic life, and in particular from female monastic life, is however impossible without an education in silence and in faith, without having learned to go through interior solitude, to live the trials of the spirit and the very weariness of the common life ‘as a spousal sharing in the solitude of Jesus in Gethsemane and in His redemptive suffering on the cross.’ (Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, Verbi sponsa. Instruction on the Contemplative Life and Monastic Enclosure, 4)
Faithful at the foot of the cross, Mary does not speak, but brings to completion the ‘yes’ of the annunciation, embracing ‘patience with mature and conscious interior silence’ (RSB 7:35). And after the great trial we find her again, in prayerful and watchful expectation of the Spirit, together with the apostles in the Cenacle, where—as at Cana—she keeps watch as a mother over the first steps of the infant Church.
As an ecclesial community, every monastery is a place in which, alternating prayer and work, in the ceaseless search for the Lord, the monk collaborates in silence in the mystery of the redemption and continues in the Church the mission of Mary at the service of all humanity. (Canopi, pp. 44-45)
