When the well-worn floorboards creak repeatedly under the weight of a Dominican friar’s black shoes as he enters the chapel and crosses the aisle to his choir stall, in one sense the silence is broken.
And in this sense, the silence in the chapel is broken regularly as dozens of friars enter to begin meditation, to set the hymn boards before praying the Divine Office, to make preparations for Mass, and so on. This kind of silence is simply a matter of not having noticeable noise, and we might grow weary or annoyed at these noises from outside ourselves intruding on our attempts to enjoy the silence.
Perhaps many of us would rather bask in the absence of jarring noises and loud hums of electric appliances that so permeate our lives. It can certainly seem as if these noises are obstacles to concentration and prayer. I’ve certainly experienced them as such, and I’m certainly not alone in that.
When I was younger, I wanted my silent time to be time spent utterly alone. I found even the barely audible whisper of someone else’s arm moving in their sleeve too distracting. I sought out a place in which I could not only be without the company of other people, but also a place without the all-pervading hum of appliances, without the background music so common to bars and restaurants and salons. I also preferred to avoid the noises of hungry wildlife rustling through the forest undergrowth so common to natural settings, though being alone in nature was generally an improvement over seeking silence in the city.
One of my favorite experiences of silent meditation in nature was while sitting next to a waterfall. I enjoyed it so much partially because of the natural beauty, but also because the noise of the waterfall occludes almost every other noise. I may have been able to hear a gunshot over the roar of the waterfall, but I can hardly be certain of that. It was a most glorious silence there in the midst of the raging waters, a silence overflowing with sound, but not intrusively noisy.
I realize now that the kind of silence I enjoy most is not simply an absence of noise. I learned to appreciate the silence of a small country parish after receiving Holy Communion, gorgeous polyphony filling the air above the heads of hushed parishioners turning their hearts to God in thanksgiving as they prayed the post-communion prayer written by St. Thomas Aquinas, holding the worn booklets in hands well-worn from praying many a Rosary.
Their silence after Communion was precisely a silence of communion. It was the silence of love, a stilling of the noise from their tongues so that God might speak into the silence of their waiting hearts while the harmonious polyphony filled their ears with his Word, occluding the intrusive noises which are so distracting while allowing the lively sounds of God’s love to enter and abide.
It is this lively silence I find so enjoyable in our chapel, a silence which is undisturbed by the occasional noise because it is being filled with the roar of the living water rushing over the deep rocky ranges of the soul. As the worn hands make the rosary beads slowly and softly traverse their well-worn path, the mysterious sounds of Christ’s love enter and abide.
As time goes on, no room in the soul is left for any other sound. The sound of Christ’s love as the only-begotten Son of the Father is increasingly the only sound that matters to us, and we are happy to share with others what we learn in the heavenly conversation with Jesus and Mary as the Holy Spirit renews us in the mellifluous silence of divine love.
I now welcome the silence in which I can hear my brothers walking over those creaky old floorboards, that lively silence which is overflowing with their prayers as they move to the rhythm of monastic observance, that harmonious polyphony of service to the living God.
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Photo by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. (used with permission)
