Victorine le Dieu, Silence and mysticism of a

vocation MONKS OF JESUS REDEEMER

Those of us who have been invited by the Lord Jesus and understand the
religious, monastic vocation, in our case as a gift and a grace from God, we
know that the obligation of the history of life, our project is a serious proposal
and that needs serious response from us. God Himself called and empowered
us. It is impossible that we ourselves can take the reins of such a wonderful and
profound work in our life as vocation. Freedom will come into play, of course,
but the gift and the grace that gives meaning to the vocation come from the
Lord. Silence and mysticism are a reality of the espousal of the soul with Christ,
of the Lord with his Church. The Church is the bride of Christ, Christ has loved
the Church with the fidelity of coming to give his life for her, as Saint Paul says
in Ephesians: "Christ loved the Church and gave himself for her" ( Eph 5:25).
Our monastic and charismatic life as contemplative brothers of Jesus the
Redeemer is a vocational call where as Christians we feel clothed in silence
and mysticism. Something that perhaps we cannot understand due to our
mediocrity and lack of depth, but which are experiences that conform us with
the grace of the Spirit, "Giver of all life", and where, or we recover the silent life
and the mystical life or our Christianity and discipleship, they will fall into error,
into the false image. We must want to live the experience of the "soul-wife",
where the belonging to a Lord is discovered, where to be a people, is then that
of "you will be my people and I will be your God" (Jr 30,22), and in the many
parallel expressions where this idea arises from a kindness and mercy that can
only be divine.
Our repairing and reconciling charism is born from that silence of Adoration, it is the
prelude to all works of adoration, as our Founder Victorine Le Dieu says and
understands and loves. Silence necessary to listen to "the voice of my beloved" (cf.
Cant. 2,8), attention to his voice that comes at night from all authentic experiences
and, mystical, light of the soul in love, because love gives ears to hear what others
neither hear nor understand (Mk 4.9). Furthermore, Jesus always uses his fidelity and
remembers that: "The shepherd calls his sheep one by one and takes them out; the
sheep follow him because they know his voice" (Jn 10,3s). Our monastic vocation is the
"yes" of Mary, the "yes" of the prophets, the "yes" of the believers to the voice of the
Lord. Charism is the spiritual way of responding to the voice of the Beloved.
For this reason, I would like to humbly delve into this topic, make this small notebook a
simple guide that animates our soul, the vocation within the family to which we belong
in the Church, such as the Institute of the Sisters of Jesus the Redeemer and Mary
Reconciler, where we do not look for "protagonists", but silence and mysticism under
the influence of a "beautiful" woman by the Spirit, Victorine Le Dieu.
Let this little notebook be a demonstration of fidelity, firmness of the charism and
deep love for the call. That in everything, only glory be for God and for the salvation of
souls.
Lord, I look for you in the Silence
The Lord is my portion - says my soul - that's why I hope in Him. The Lord is good to
those who wait for Him, to the soul that seeks Him. It is good to wait in silence for the
salvation of the Lord… ”(Lam 3,25).
Silence is an experience of love itself. Without silence one cannot speak of love or be in
love. God, in his creation, contemplated us and it was his said silence that allowed us
to be. Silence is a great word of divine love.
There are many kinds of silence, and, as in everything, there is falsehood in many of
the silences that we keep, which can never become the experience of the All.

Silences that break the integrity of people, silences that crush and crush human
realities. But the name of silence can only be discovered from the highest degree of
encounter, such as that of Moses on Mount Horeb, where he receives his vocation (cf.
Ex 2:23) or that of great prophets like Elijah, demonstrated from the Mount Carmel
that the Lord was the true God, or Samuel in the night (1 Sam 3,3-4), or that of Jesus in
Tabor (cf. Mc. 9,2).

Silence is the Word of God conjugated in the verb to love, serve, be. Silence is the
tenderness of God, presence of the One who is, light in the midst of darkness. Silence
is God's project in the soul.
He is the "listen Israel, the Lord is our God, one is the Lord ... you will love the Lord
your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your being ..." (Dt. 6,4-9).

For us, baptized Christians, now consecrated by the Saint in the monastic vocation,
this profound experience of meeting with the Silent, God, is important. We must
openly enter the experience of those who want to find, intimacy, holiness in us. What
can silence have in us but this? Holiness is no stranger to silence, when it is from God
and we know how to keep in us the Spirit of God who speaks, slowly, sometimes very
quietly, in us.

But his voice resonates, it is heard and it takes its toll, it stays, it penetrates and ... it
hurts, it hurts when the Word of the Lord enters and does its job, which is to detach
ourselves from people, from situations, to remove the obstacles on the way to Him.
And it is not a depersonalized silence, which does not enter into communion with
others or is not interested in anything from others, but it is the silence that sets us free
and leaves others free ... it is the silence of praying love, of accompanying the concrete
man with silent prayer that heals.

Silence is not exclusive to the monk, but the anthropological essence of being. Man
needs silence as well as the word. But in us, consecrated precisely in solitude, we
understand that it is an office to keep silence so that man can listen to God again.
We are in a society that asks everything, wants to know everything immediately, and
needs explanations of everything. We must educate, teach, this whimsical society that
tries to manipulate, like a spoiled and manipulative child, the relationships to which
there is a path that is that of intellectual non-explanation, the thousands of reasons for
things, the why of all things ... We must return to leave space in society and in man to
mystery, to silence. Couldn't it be a monk mission from the monastery? Let society and
the world open their ears to God again? Silence without a doubt is a great listen. We
have stopped listening to what is important and we have given way to superficial
things.

The monk of Jesus the Redeemer, as a member of the contemplative Church, is above
all a man who knows about silence because in his founding charism is the silent
encounter of the soul with its Creator. Victorine Le Dieu is a religious who understands

God more than by the miraculous divine demonstrations, by the continuous silence of
God in her life and, nevertheless, by the fidelity of the founder to God through human
mediations. Let me explain: for her, when the Church speaks, God speaks and God is
not mistaken.
To listen to the men of God is to understand the Lord's project in your life. If God has
shown his face to other saints, he has offered them concrete signs, wrapped in
moments of ecstasy and rapture, spaces worthy of respect and admiration, in our
Mother, God has only shown him the project through obedience.

Silence and obedience go hand in hand in our case. Victorine listens to the voice and
exposes to the ecclesiastical authorities what is brewing in her soul, humbly shows
what exists in the most intimate part of herself regarding her vocation.

There are no wonderful signs, no lights and rays appear around a moment of prayer ...
but there is an interior illumination, a certainty of faith in God that sustains and
maintains the intention of the founder. This experience of union and communion with
God is in Victorine a consequence of her silence, of attentive listening to God. In it, the
will of God is above all things. Silence does not justify or justify the person, silence is
only fidelity. We are very used to giving explanations for everything, but the soul that
lives in silence believes in silence. Victorine will say:

"Why try to justify me? The Blessed Virgin did not do so and all those who had an
interest in knowing her divine motherhood were informed of it much better than she
would have done herself.
And I will imitate Maria in her complete silence while she responds only with:
"Magnificat”. ”
Silence leads us to understand how those who follow the Lord do so unarmed, clothed
in a courageous faith that is born from listening and from the experience of the divine
Word. They are, will be, the Holy Scriptures a norm of life in the existence of the monk
of Jesus the Redeemer. Our founding Mother loved the Word and for her they were
voice and obedience to follow; the Word is the way to understand the vocation, it will
say:
“It is true that the Word of God nurtures and comforts. How many times have I
thanked God for the grace to love her. Inspired by these words: "For it is written of me:
Behold, I come to do O God, your will", the soul that has understood them joyfully
follows the Word of God and abandons everything to follow the Master where the
knock. The truth of the Gospel will remain until the end of time. In it I find light and
strength in the midst of innumerable trials. "
To be silent is to trust God who will do justice. The monk, the nun of Jesus the
Redeemer a crucified and a hopeful. He does not open his mouth and follow the Lamb,
he does not defend himself. This has been learned from its founder, the intelligent
woman in the Spirit, in the things of heaven, the believer, the one who lives in the
certainty of her faith, our Mother will write:

“On several occasions I have thought to fight against the injustices of which I have
been a victim and of which I was sure that I could be victorious. But thinking that God
allowed them and wishing to avoid scandals, already quite numerous in that place, I
decided to suffer in silence and in silence move away. This seemed to give reason to
our enemies, but Providence will know, as always, to take good from evil when it
wants. ”

The project of the monastic vocation has been a reality in the Church since its
inception as a concrete way of responding to the Lord; It will be the faithful, those in
need of communion and of existing in the divine call those who want to form the
group of the silent, wanting with them to respond to the image of Jesus-Passion, of the
divine man who made his way with the one who suffered. Within this vocation,
Gethsemane, is a place of passions of the soul and God, of the monk and his solitude
with which he was betrayed. Jesus is the groom, the soul, the bride.
The monk, the nun, consecrated by the vows himself, is a lover and they enter the
Monastery as an orchard of encounter between the soul and God. The monastery is
the place of the meeting, of the meeting between lovers. It is a great evocation of
Paradise before the fall, of the garden of the Song of Songs, because it is a constant
search for the love of God. It is the image of those in love with inviolable authentic
loves, it is, in a word, the Gethsemane of self-giving, of generosity and of the Cross.
The monastery must be an authentic Calvary and of a fraternity in exalted communion.
Letting the will of the Father God be done in him will be obedience to Calvary. The
founder will say:

“Jesus during his passion has suffered in silence allowing the Father to do
justice. And so have I. Apart from his infinite holiness and my infinite misery, how
much resemblance between him and me because of this work! The Sacred Heart of
Jesus is surrounded by thorns and we can feel some punctures when we try to enter
Him, but it is quite wide and will have set for us as well. FIAT."
Living in the monastery is existing on Calvary, allowing the Lord to make his way in us.
But it is a struggle, an experience of the reality that one loves. We do not keep a bad
silence, but we wait in silence for the Work to be defended by the Defender who
introduced us to it, as the Beloved to the Beloved in the cellar of spousal Love. Because
the monk loves God above all things. Silence leads him to deepen this love. Loneliness
invites you to meet your Beloved. And that love is shown only to Him, because, as
Victorine says, he is jealous:

“True affection has no need for vain demonstrations. Love is more solid
practicing charity with Jesus and Mary, than with dull caresses that unnerve the heart.
Let us reserve the effusions of tenderness to the Divine Spouse of our souls. He is
jealous and has more rights than anyone else. Yes, our silence, loving it, guards the
heart and affections. Our life is ordered under the power of true love and we become
more human and more attentive to others in the plurality of the community and not in
the singularity of the brothers. Having love for God centered in our hearts, allows us to
walk in the community lightly, without strange weights or infernal chains. ”

We as disciples of the Lord are not immune to obstacles or trials, on the contrary, by
carrying the Word of the Gospel within us, we are called to bear faithful witness to the
Lord who called us, called us and gave us , within the Church a charism of reparation
and reconciliation. It is pure love that has strengthened us to understand this of
bearing on us the "footprints of Christ", or as Saint Paul will say, his wounds. Let us
never pretend to be euphoric Christians maddened by good living, by having our lives
solved, let us never separate the sight of the one who called us and chose us, so that
"we would be holy and irreproachable before him for love." Write before this flesh of
ours that the founding Mother should keep silent and not be scandalized by her
weakness:

“Every day we are overwhelmed by serious difficulties that we face with silence and
patience. Blessed be God! Pray that restorative worship, the sole goal of our work, can
succeed. ”
As monks of Jesus the Redeemer we are called to the custody of a silent charism. Our
Foundress has not been successful, at least apparently from other Christians who in
the history of the Church have excelled by the action of the Spirit and because they
were taken by God to high peaks that they could see, feel, understand. She, has been,
has felt and identified with the image of the “servant of God”, like Mary, Victorine Le
Dieu has known how to be silent faithful to the will of God in her soul and, while
humbly hiding the “ make God ”in her, to avoid pride, to keep listening, not to stray
from the path, others thought she was deranged or expressed the doubt that“ there
could be nothing good in her ”, maybe good feelings, good deeds, but nothing else. All
this has identified much more our Mother Victorine making her an oasis of God in the
desert of the life of so many thirsty souls. Some despised her, others ignored her, she,
on the contrary, makes a silent, humble journey, seeking to make the Work of God
triumph through the reparative charism. For Victorine, the "sole objective" of her life is
the Work of God and she sees that fulfillment and the Christian cross that loves and
defends itself in reparation.

Fidelity to silence in the founder is the example for us to follow the path taken. We
cannot look back, the Gospel forbids it, it does not make us worthy of the Master, to
live in silence, to love in and from monastic silence and the life chosen by God for us is
to keep waiting on God alone. It is allowing the fidelity of the founder to remain a
humble reality within the ecclesial community. Mother writes:

"Courage and confidence, my children. God sees everything and knows well what each
one of us does for this work. In silence, He searches the deepest part of each heart.
Ask each other therefore for the grace to always live in his presence. ”

It is that, the silence in our monastic life is that, we do not simply keep silence, but it is
the experience of teaching others to wait, it is to appease the spaces of those who lost
patience or became unbalanced. Silencing life and remaining in that silence leads us to
be waiting for God to enter, scrutinize our intention in us. What are we? What are we
looking for? What do we appear to be? Silence does not allow a double heart, but an
opening to grace. What a good invitation it would be today, and every day, to say to
the Spirit of God: "come, come in, know, make me know in truth ..." Become friends in
the loving silence of the Holy Spirit ...

We keep fraternal silence, the one that makes us look at each other, love each other,
never hate or feel hindered, the silence in our monastic life enhances the community
and deepens it. Now that we are in difficult times to save religious and community life,
it would not be wrong to return to that sobering silence of the saints, of the Lord
himself. Creative silence.
Our communities would be more spiritual, they would be more human. We would love
to be in communion and we would not settle for the serious illness that now runs
through us of staying together, but not as a single body. No, the silence in our
monastery is not the one that saves you from talking to the one you don't love or from
not looking at the one you dislike. Silence is not utopian in us but a response to the
Word of God, to our Christian commitments, silence is a word within the great Word:
Christ. Whoever keeps Christian silence becomes the word of Christ in the world.
There is talk of perfection in religious life, of keeping the commandments, the rules,
the norms ... that gives unity, at least order. But if we look humbly at the Rule of Life, if
we understand again that in our way of life order and fulfillment make the whole body
walk and fulfill its mission in love, we will believe again and not look suspiciously at the
schedules, norms ... Do we not seek to unite ourselves with God?
Why then prayer if it does not lead us to want to understand this way of life? Well here
may be a step. Our Founding Mother will say:

"Pray always, my children, and above all, observe silence, moderation, fidelity and
perfect obedience to be able to reach union with God." ... "Dear children, perfect
obedience to the Rule and the norms. Only in this way can we demonstrate our love
for Jesus and deserve his. "
Victorine, she is a true mystic, and I allow myself to use this term knowing what it
entails, but there is no other choice but to recognize in this humble servant the Most
High Work of God. Really, our founder has been able to hide intimacy with the Lord
and to show, so to speak, a “low profile” of herself and of what God was doing within
her. She is a mystic who writes to show the "holy doing" of the Lord, seeks refuge in
the word of God and feeds on the Eucharist and the spiritual direction of each other,
(she had no choice but to rely on priests and bishops for his itinerant life) gets to
weave a life of authentic experience of God in his soul. Victorine's life is the life of a
believer who stands tall. "Standing" is not a sign of arrogance, but of constant prayer,
of remaining in listening to the divine Word, of not being distracted and not
discouraged. Keeping silence in Victorine is a way of breathing in only God, who sees,
listens, attends to those who wait. Will write:

"Silence keeps in the presence of God, allows listening to his inspirations, helps to
avoid dissipation, always fatal, and the irreparable loss of time that is given only to
know, love and serve God. No virtue is possible without the external silence and above
all without the internal recollection that is acquired only with the holy habit of the
presence of God.

The mystical life in Victorine Le Dieu is not a learning of "self-proclamation", but of the
gift of the soul open to the experience of the Transcendent. It is not enough for
Victorine to hear about God, as the people did when she heard the Samaritan woman
speak of the man who found herself at the well, but goes further, she launches herself
into the personal experience of the God who transcends. Thus, Victorine is a woman of
depth in her experience, she enters the Mystery, she is not a simple connoisseur of
him, but she enters. And, entering into the mystery of the holy God requires a deep
inner silence. Mysticism requires it. Victorine, as in the First Letter of John, is convinced
that she can only speak of what she "has seen and heard" (cf. 1 Jn 1,1-4); seeing,
hearing with the grace of the Spirit that manifests itself in the silence of the longing
soul of God-Love, inevitably leads to entering the experience, not only divine, but
human, since the whole person is transfigured and leaves it light that others can
describe as a spiritual path.
One of those spaces where Victorine hints at what is happening in her soul and that
lead us to think about deep intimacy is when she says:

"Sacred Heart of Jesus, who has loved man so much, have compassion on me, I want
your heart as the center, your love as the norm of life, your grace as help, nothing
more than this I desire and I seek it above all, because you know what you want from
me, you know that I have nothing and I don't want anything other than you. ”
For Victorine, the "mystical experience" is not a play on words, but the reason to give
meaning to life and its way. If we lose our reason for being, for which we have been
born, the vital project of the heart, then there will be nothing to experience and life
that is a gift-from-heaven will have lost its essence: to realize itself as history, to leave
its mark on way so that others are not discouraged. The mystical experience from
silence continues to be a light in the midst of the darkness of life; hence a return to
spiritual and mystical life is needed. Our founder is not a dreamer, but a walker, who
does not stop the steps towards God, that is why we can speak of the silent experience
of the founder, as mystical experience of her soul. And, this commits us as Brothers
and Sisters of Jesus the Redeemer. The spiritual life is not a parallel to our daily life ...
but the centrality of that path that we travel under the action of the Spirit.
You cannot speak of mystical life, of experience of God as such without community
reference, our Mother was a true sign of what was born inside.
The mystic, the mystic are those who feel in themselves the strength of communion in
response to the love that God has for them. Mystical life is thus, a community bond,
where each of those who make up the religious community are invited to care for,
seek and inquire into the experience of the Holy Spirit; This is how fidelity to the
charism is born, which is a pure mystique of the Holy Spirit for the good of souls.

We have the examples of St. Vincent de Paul and many others. Courage, therefore, let
us try any effort to save souls, or at least try. "

Then our silent life becomes community itself, it gives itself to its main task, which is to
love God and serve man, a true vocation as consecrated is born in it. It is like the
memory of what we are and we will not deviate from the path to which we are called
to carry out. The life of monastic silence is the life of one who seeks union with God
out of love. You cannot silence life, nor make it spiritual, but it is framed in the praying
experience, Victorine will say:

“Union with God is the main goal of religious life, the goal that God sets for himself
when he calls us. This is understood when the vocation to the religious state is
recognized. Pray always, my children, and above all, observe silence, moderation,
fidelity and perfect obedience to be able to reach union with God. ”

"Union with God", "pray to come to union with God", expressions of the soul in love
and clarified in love. There is nothing else in Victorine that live in love, exist in intimacy
with only God. What humanity is that of Victorine, that restorer of souls ...! What more
could you ask of a woman convinced of God? She writes and does it in order to bring
many closer to God, save them and asks those who follow him on this path of the
Spirit, from the call to do it for the good of others, to strive for others, to renounce all
to save souls.

If those who are under the charism of reconciliation as priests, laity, religious or
monks, live this mystical union, then all experience of God in the soul will be
revitalized, being aware of the Trinitarian inhabitation in the heart. A community
where its members breathe in God is a community of believers and witnesses.

John Paul II wrote in the letter on Consecrated Life the following: “The spiritual life,
therefore, must occupy the first place in the program of families of consecrated life, in
such a way that each Institute and each community appear as schools of authentic
evangelical spirituality ”(n. 93). Furthermore: “Each charism carries an orientation
towards the Holy Spirit, since it disposes the person to allow himself to be led and
sustained by him, both in his own spiritual journey and in the life of communion and
apostolic action, to live in that attitude of service that should inspire every decision of
the authentic Christian ”(n. 36).

Victorine is a woman from another century, from another time, but she seems to carry
all this grace of now on her, as if she showed us her way and invited us to it.
The Founder will say:
"Only the souls who sincerely acknowledge their nullity and weakness walk the safe
path, if they rely on God with confidence, they persevere in vigilance and prayer."

Silence through charisma is a recollection of our activities, in and during them, it is a

way of keeping things in our hearts through the watchful eye of God. Like the
prophets, like the saints, God wants to address man and speak to the heart. This is
pure prophesy. God wants to befriend and send from the heart. That is why silence, an
urgent need in the life of the Christian, of the believer, of the monk. Silence, because
the noise is not supported by the Spirit, the founder will say. To keep recollection is to
be open to the grace of God.

“There will never be enough emphasis on silence, without which perfection is

impossible. God calls souls to speak to their hearts and the Spirit cannot bear noises
when he wants to speak to their souls. As much as possible, she must remain in
continuous recollection, because it is possible for human frailty, this effort should not
frighten us because if we acquire the habit of recollection we will have reached full
happiness. ”

And, silence gives happiness, why not? Why? Well, because it is the purity of having
been obedient, having been listening. The happiness and peace of man are locked in
silence. They are treasures of it. God likes the silence that makes the soul bear fruit,
because silence is never related to sterility, never!
The true silence is divine, companion, helpful, interior, humanizing ... the silences that
we are getting used to are those that produce death, pain, those that do not enter into
communion. These cannot be called silences. Victorine will say:

"He (God) feels in the silence the sigh that comes from the depths of the heart, ask
each other for the grace to continually remember his divine presence."

Silence is for Victorine a "being in the presence of God". How important is this. For her,
living in God is everything. Doesn't silence help us precisely this? And living in God is a
reality of human life. Man cannot be alone, nor can he live alone, he is called to divine
communion, that is why his interior is inhabitation, as we said before, of God.

Created by the God Trinity, we are prepared to live in the presence of God and of the
brothers. And, now I would like to be able to share, after having entered the heart of
our founder, a reflection on silence, which helps, in some way, to what we have been
showing.

Silence helps the soul to live the experience of God and will sustain with obedience to
the monk. He gives us all thanks and the opportunity to understand God.
There is, within the experience of silence that man inevitably lives, an urge to answer
himself what silence is, why silence, which is what the mystery of silence offers him.

And we quickly discovered that silence is not only necessary, but urgent to allow it to
reign in the heart; moreover, man cannot exist without overwhelming silence, which
always approaches in silence and acts peacefully in search of truth in man's life.
Silence is a truth-free performance that seeks truth, leads to truth and anoints us in
authenticity.

But man does not always live deep and healthy experiences well, he manipulates and
misuses them. It seems that he is not content with having an experience of ..., but
breaks the communion that can arise from each experience. When this divine purity is
manipulated and we fill it with words, with meaningless events we distort a strong
moment in an unbearable weakness. Manipulated silence by the wicked heart, by the
superficiality of man, has remained nothing, something else that arrives, but that
leaves nothing but agonizing fatigue.

Silence reduced to pain, to blows of no glances, of no words, of horrible inhuman

sensations, we have prostituted him and sentenced him to kill more than life, to
remain in the feeling of emptiness, more than the depth of love that everything will
say in silence. Without a doubt, silence is divine, it is an experience that speaks in itself
and where the soul and its Creator understand each other. To give space to silence is
to grow in the truth of God's project in us.

Today's man no longer wants silence, he does not want that true experience of
authenticity. It seems that it is an enemy for the life of society: therefore, let us make
sure that there is no silence, that it does not come and bring the Good News of what
will arise within the heart that loves silence.

Silence is not a war, but peace for your inner war, it is truly seeing you. See that I am
not talking about the cursed silence, the one that separates men, the silence that
comes arrogantly to tell you that God is your Father, but that you are not anyone's
brother, but "lord of all", I do not want to stop at that silence that damages you,
breaking the fraternity of your soul and making you an island where no one will reach
because its borders are closed by the egoism of the non-word. I speak to you, I want to
speak to you about the profound silence, the true silence, of the one that enters and
leaves and makes you holy. Of the silence that, as I said before, is the silence of God,
who in His incarnate Word explains everything, affirms and makes us bear fruit of
eternal life.
The men and women of God, seek in silence not the separation of all and everything,
on the contrary, the experience of silence makes them more coherent in their
fraternity, and unites them in truth. Whoever wants to be spiritual has to want to be
silence, not only keep silence, but become silent. Silence enters, remains in the eternal
word of Jesus, becomes light. This silence that those of us who desire a spiritual life
seek is none other than the open, human dialogue between God and the disciple.
There is no deep discipleship without the welcoming silence of the Other, of the Great
God who has loved us to the extreme.
Yes, to be silent is to enable listening to the Lord. Without silence there is no listening,
because the heart fills with noise, with images, with ideas that, disorderly, enter, leave,
and wreak havoc; Only with silence can I enter into communion. Listening is
welcoming, becoming a pitcher, a vessel, a pure space to welcome the Pure and Holy.
It is allowing what I hear to enter, stay and grow. And I can only take root in faith,
through the silence of those who wish to inhabit me. God Himself explains it to us in
the Gospel of John: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my words, and the Father will
love him and we will come to him, and we will dwell in him” (Jn 14:23) or those others
“Like you, Father, in me and I in you, that they too may be one in us so that the world
may believe that you have sent me… I in them and you in me, so that they may be
perfectly one ”(Jn 17, 21-23). Silence leads us precisely to the inhabitation of the divine
mystery in the heart. Thus, silence is not the void of which society speaks, but the
spoken word, full of the truth of who fills everything. Silence is the same God who
speaks, directs, educates and forms for his kingdom.

Today keeping silence is complicated, we are not used to it and what we call silence is
pure selfishness of the non-word or the sign of a war and inner violence that leads only
to death.

Society has taken care to fill us with many words, with a lot of noise, images, sounds,
spaces where silence is prohibited. It has made man ruin the interior and become
more superficial.

However, despite this fight between those who seek to kill the silence of human life,
and those who strive to offer the best of themselves from silence, we have an
inescapable space in which to make silence, it will always be a provocation of the Word
lived in Christ. The liturgy is precisely the substantial verb, where singing, praying,
spacing the psalms, the readings, making calm proclamation of what God comes to tell
us, is the permission granted to the Father of life to show himself. The liturgy is a
reflection of the Lord Himself. And it is at the same time not giving in to the quest for
the reign of silence in the heart of man.
The Church and Christians are very concerned with making known in the circumstances
in which man lives that the community works hard to bring about the kingdom of
justice.

Our communities and charisms have filled the world and society with active signs,
without stopping, without rest we show doing. A great activity, social, charity,
catechism ... too much work but done from exhaustion and non-testimony. We do a
lot, but without love.
Love is born in silence for what must be done. Loving is showing the inner fruits with
peace. Silence is not an anthropology, this is how we have reduced it and this is how
we are living it. A Church and some Christian, religious, monastic communities that are
under the pressure of doing, but not of being, can never be a testimony of the Lord,
and therefore the constitutional, legal silence that can appear in the rules of life of
Many religious or monastic communities will only be that, norms, but not a life of
solitude that silently seeks the truth of God's love. For us believers, silence has to be a
theological dimension. The example of the prophet Elijah on Mount Horeb is
significant: there, God passed, but he did not do it as the prophet expected, but as the
Lord himself is: "a gentle breeze", which means the spirituality of God and the intimacy
of his deal with his prophets.

God comes silently, which is not the presence of weakness, but the reality of a
dynamic action that requires strength, authenticity and courage to fulfill what will be
commanded. Thus, silence enables us for mission, in our monastic case.
This brave action is born as the voice reaches Elijah, covers his face with the cloak,
leaves, says the word, stands at the entrance to the cave and receives the orders of the
Lord, he must obey. Silence is not to stay with arms crossed, but to open them to the
world and teach, correct, bring mystery to many.

Loving silence, looking for them in the truth inside is leaving the same doubt that we
have entered so many other times when thinking that silence is only in words, but
inside there are only voices. No, love for the experience of God in the soul is the
silence that fulfills us. God can do nothing but fill the life of the one who welcomes and
listens to him. We need to return to the inner silence, to the bottom of ourselves.
Thanks to silence we will be able to see better, observe, I would define silence as the
contemplation of what surrounds me according to God, who does not see by
appearance. If you remain silent, you will have interiority, that is, the best that you can
offer to the world will be born from you: yourself made word-silence. Thus is born in
you or arises that baptismal prophetic force that identifies you.

Silence is what will make you discern, since evil thoughts are born within the heart,
silence is the truth that purifies those thoughts and sick solitudes of the soul. Silence
brings you closer to the other, to welcome and serve him. Silence makes you a servant
to the brothers. There is no clearer Christian quality than that of being a servant,
learning to be so from the One who became the servant of all. If silence does not lead
to love-charity, it becomes sterile and is not the pure quality of God the Trinity.
Everything was done in the silence of creation, hence everything is called to life in
perfection: "Be perfect, as your Father is perfect", Jesus will say.

Silence perfects charity because discernment makes us more aware of what we should
say, show, hug, kiss and heal. "The love of Christ urges us," writes Saint Paul, which is
nothing other than the conscience born of silent prayer and of seeking the truth
within.

We said before that silence is not to run away or to be comfortable, but to seek the
goods from above, Saint Paul already says: "Seek the goods from above" (cf. Col 3,1-4).

Silence seeks to unite the heart inwardly, so that it may adore God in his Word, accept
it and loving that Word, allow it to silently dwell within man.

"He put his dwelling among us," explains the prologue of Saint John. A dwelling place
of eternity in the human dimension of the fragile. This is what God wants, who always
surprises us, He, infinitely Eternal, Mysterious, Inaccessible, Omnipotent and
Omniscient, comes to us “because God loved the world so much that he sent his Son
into the world, so that none of those who perish would perish. He loves. " And God
comes to be all in all, to fill us with joy. His Mystery, his inaccessibility, his omnipotence
are the traits closest to us that, instead of separating or confusing us, reveal to us his
peace and love, "do not be afraid".

Monastic silence is not the exclusivity of those who left everything to go with Christ to
the desert, but an experience that today, the Church, the Christian, the leaven man in
the world, would need to recover as treasure. The monk, in the monastic tradition, can
help us precisely in this journey in search of the authenticity of silence and see its
benefits.

And if the monk, man of God, can teach the ordinary Christian man to keep silent, it is
because his whole life is dedicated to keeping silence, living in the truth, loving the
truth. He looks at Christ, the only Word and contemplates it in the humility of the
image of the dumb Lamb, the one who takes away the sin of the world and destroys
the desire of sufficiency and arrogance of the heart of man. Contemplate Christ and
pray, in silence and in the midst of the mystery of the Passion, of suffering does not say
a word, so as not to spoil the depth of the truth and of saving and redemptive acts.
Jesus fell silent, fell silent, did not open his mouth ... Jesus, keep silent ... the monk
learns in this voluntary sacrifice to keep the silence that allows the Eternal Word of the
Father to speak, manifest and always have the "last Word" for the heart of the man.

There is a great need for silence in our life, too many words that cloud many moments
in life. We speak badly and we speak many times with the consequences of the poison
that our words carry and, we remain silent when we should be like the mouth of the
Lord, which is the mouth of the sword.

Silence leads us precisely to that personal encounter with ourselves, not from a selfish
echo of listening without further ado, but to the balance within us that will know how
to discern what to say, what to keep quiet, without cursing the life we have , without
contaminating it with hypocrisy. The silence from which we must learn and that the
monks teach us is the worshiping silence, from which he awaits, a humble silence that
bears fruit in the Lord's season. When our homes look at each other in holy silence, a
silence that seeks to contemplate and look at each other in peace and harmony, when
our parish communities launch themselves to look at each other humbly and with
Christian respect, or when consecrated life becomes fraternal in silence, solidary at
work Humble, the community of Jesus is born, Meek Lamb, the community of those
who know where love is and pay a beautiful price with their lives to become
constructive silence, hopeful, companion, the true silence is that of Christ and is the
one who he saves us and makes us be and exist. Living in silence is speaking in truth
and we will not pass in front of others. We will be true Christians.