Early in our talk with Father Bethel, we asked a blunt question. Can a person grow spiritually without silence? His answer was just as blunt. You have to have silence. Without it, your emotions and senses pull you in every direction, and you cannot turn to God. You will probably end up sinning, since you’re carried off by every image you took in that day. He did add that it depends a little on what you mean by silence.
Quiet Is Not the Same as Silent
That qualifier matters. Father Bethel separated silence from the plain absence of noise. An empty room is neutral. Silence in his sense starts with thinking about what you should be doing. Then it grows into a richer silence, where you gaze at God with love.
He gave the example of saying “Our Father.” Once you’ve meditated a lot on God the Father, those two words carry everything. You don’t have to think it all through again, because it’s still there in a silent way. Nature works somewhat like this. It is never completely quiet, yet most of its sounds are calm and soothing. So silence is not emptiness. It is an ordered calm where you think what you want to think and aren’t torn in every direction.
One of us noted that this means silence doesn’t just happen. You have to be proactive and intentional about it. Father Bethel agreed.
Two Sides of the Spiritual Life
Looking at God
Father Bethel described two sides to the spiritual life. The first is spiritual conversion, which includes the sacraments, prayer, and listening to God’s word. This is the looking side, aimed at God’s silence.
Calming What Gets in the Way
The second is moral conversion, which means fighting the eight deadly vices. This calms the noise so it stops bothering us. He added that our emotions and imagination were made to help us reach God. The goal is to channel them, not to kill them.
Do What You’re Doing
A priest friend once said, at a retreat at Clear Creek, that God wants you to do what you’re doing. The devil, on the other hand, wants you to do everything but what you’re doing. If you’re reading, the devil wants to take you all over the place. So Father Bethel’s advice is plain. Ask what this moment is for, and then do that. It sounds simple, but it is harder than it looks.
Why We Fill Every Gap With Noise
We asked why silence scares so many people. Father Bethel said we fill our lives with noise partly because we don’t want to face the great truths. We are afraid to be alone with ourselves and think about deep things. He also said younger generations find the monastic silence harder. They are used to video games, while he grew up on television.
Words That Come Out of Silence
Good words, Father Bethel said, flow from deep interior silence. You can tell when a teacher has read a lot and is half quoting. You can also tell when someone speaks from what he has truly realized. John Senior came up right away as a great example. A teacher like that has the reality in him, and he is not just repeating words he memorized.
Silence and the Other Virtues
Silence and patience seem to travel together. Father Bethel said calm people with a good interior life are rarely in a rush. If you’re in God’s presence, you aren’t doing everything yourself anyway. Sometimes we do have to move quickly, but we can do it peacefully.
He also said the virtues grow together. When you work on temperance, your passions bother you less, which makes it easier to gaze on God. Then the gaze makes it easier to deal with the passions. You need temperance to be courageous, and both to think prudently. All of this opens us to faith, hope, and charity, which is the real supernatural life.
If the basics of prayer are new to you, our Start Here page is a good first stop. For the full conversation, listen to the episode.
