Into Great Silence

If someone in your house is a movie buff and you haven't found the perfect Christmas present for them yet, I’d like to recommend a movie to you that just came out on DVD this year. It’s called Into Great Silence and is a documentary from a German filmmaker Philip Gröning. In 1984 Gröning wrote a letter to the Carthusians, which is the strictest of the Catholic Monastic orders, to make a documentary about them and their way of life. Carthusians maintain a strict vow of silence throughout the day, except during the hours of prayer, seeking to live their entire life in the embrace of God without words. They said they’d get back to him and sixteen years later, they did. And so for six months in 2000, Gröning lived at the Grande Chartreuse monastery in the French Alps living their life, filming their daily prayers, tasks, and rituals.

As I watched this film these past few weeks, I was entranced. It was almost devotional. There is virtually no dialogue. And yet, there was much conversation, as the brothers knelt in silence in prayer, as they slowly, carefully went about their daily work of gathering firewood, of making their clothes, of cooking food for the community, of gathering in the chapel to chant and pray the psalms. And in watching them live their lives, I learned a valuable lesson. For me, I think I always saw silence as the absence of noise. But for them, the silence was filled with the Presence of God. I wonder how often I/we miss that Presence because of our noise, because of our busyness, because we do not take time to be still and know that God is God.

I resolve to not let the noise of Christmas interfere with the silence that is filled with the Presence.

Blessed Advent.

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