We recorded this conversation at the 11th annual Catholic Man Show Campout, sitting at Clear Creek Abbey in Hulbert, Oklahoma. Halfway through, a downpour hit. Father Bethel, a Benedictine monk of the abbey, said it didn’t bother him. We asked if the monks feel the peace everyone notices at the front gate. His answer was simple. That’s just their life.
Father Bethel recently wrote a book called From Silence to Silence. His publisher first asked for a retreat, but they wanted something more unified. So they suggested silence. His reply, by his own telling, was a quiet “shh.”
A Pilgrimage in Four Parts
Father Bethel described the book as a pilgrimage. He wishes it had drawings, so he walked us through the pictures he would have included. Honestly, it gave us Interior Castle vibes.
Part One: The Jungle
A traveler sets out with a staff. That staff stands for faith, hope, and charity, the gifts God has already given us. Ahead of him lies thick woods and no obvious trail. Father Bethel said the spiritual life does not begin with scrubbing ourselves clean. It begins when we look at God and get interested in him. Wanting to be purified comes after that.
Three chapters follow. The first covers exterior silence, which sets a good rhythm. Next comes calming the passions, the imagination, and the emotions. Finally, a chapter on our words and how to use them for God.
Part Two: A Path Through the Woods
Now the traveler has a path, and a church glimmers in the distance. This section is about meditating on God’s transcendence, beauty, and love. Each of these draws us toward his mystery and his silence. Father Bethel said this is his favorite part.
Part Three: The Cliff
Then comes the surprise. The sanctuary sits high on a cliff, and the traveler cannot climb it alone. Meditation carries us only so far, and after that God has to lift us. So the third part covers faith, hope, and charity. It also covers the humility of admitting we can’t do this ourselves.
Part Four: The Window
The traveler reaches the sanctuary but cannot go in yet. Instead, he looks through a window and catches glimmers of heaven. The last chapters cover prayer and then heaven itself. Father Bethel closed with St. Augustine, who finished his treatise on the Trinity as an old man. As Father told it, Augustine wrote that he had talked for a long time and longed to enter God’s silence. There, everyone would say the one Word of God together, in love.
How a Monk Finds Time to Write a Book
The two of us wrote a book with our wives, and it was hard. A monk’s day is far more ordered than ours, so we asked how he did it. Father Bethel gets about an hour at a time, or two on a good day. Between prayer, meals, work, and classes, four or five free hours was the most he ever had. Teaching jobs ate into that as well.
This book took a couple of years, while his first took ten. He assumed he could just glue old talks together. That did not work, because moving a talk into a new grouping changes everything around it. Still, he said the order came out pretty good in the end.
Who the Book Is For
Most of the material began as talks to contemplative nuns and monks. However, Father Bethel wrote with lay people in mind. When he gets concrete, he is mostly speaking to people out in the world about how to begin praying. One of us admitted feeling like a beginner, and he said that was fine. If you want a gentler on-ramp first, our Start Here page is a good place to begin.
You can order the book through Clear Creek. Father Bethel also told us to search the title and we would find it somewhere. It has no pictures, which one of us pointed out right away.
The full conversation also covers why God speaks in silence and how a monastery keeps the Great Silence. Listen to the full episode to hear it.
