The Silence of a New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve, 2014.

I found an artifact from the past, a scribbled piece of notebook paper headed with the words:

Retreat: Holy Cross Abbey, December 1989

The last three days of December, twenty five years ago.

Let that soak in for just a moment. 1989 was twenty five years ago.

And I was about to turn twenty seven years old. I was a graduate student living in the Washington D.C. area, and this was my first visit to the Cistercian monastery in Berryville, Virginia that would become so very important and dear to me nine years later.

It was an "undirected retreat," which means that I checked into the guest house outside the enclosure, and was able (but not required) to follow the monastery's liturgical schedule in the abbey church. The guest house had its own chapel and dining area, and a monk brought food to the guests three times a day. We ate in silence while he read spiritual reflections.

One of the fathers came to hear confessions and give private counsel to those who desired it.

Otherwise, we were free to experience solitude, to pray, to read in our rooms, or to walk through the farmlands and woods on the monastery property. I did a lot of walking.

The simple Cistercian abbey church in the morning.

I also followed the monastic schedule, including the vigils at 3:30 AM.

I scribbled a few notes on the notebook paper, thoughts that passed through my head. Now, twenty five years later, the words pass before my eyes.

I want to end the year 2014 with the words of 1989, words about a Valley that was destined to be the place I would make my home, where I would raise my children, words about my search for God on the threshold of a new decade.

I was just young, and it is a marvel to remember so long ago. I was praying to know God's will for my life. A few weeks later I met Eileen for the first time, but that's another story... a whole collection of stories.

So many things have changed in twenty five years, but the Mystery of God remains, and in the presence of God I remain a child.

"Dogs bark back and forth across the valley, and I hear -- between surges of the hum and thump of blood in the tissues of my inner ear -- holy silence.

"A distant train whistle slices the night mist, and as the abbey bell shakes the roof timbers in the church the monks pass in procession before the abbot to receive his blessing, their practiced feet in an orderly dance over the creaky wooden floors.

"After the night vigil I prostrate myself on the carpet at the edge of the cloister in the abbey church, pressing my forehead and nose against the floor -- 'O Lord, see how I abase myself before You?'

"Dawn and Christ come in the morning Eucharist: 'John, see rather how I abase myself before you.' "

Benedict: Following the Hunger for God

Below these reflections, I have reproduced a post from one year ago on "secularization". The problems it addresses are still very much with us.

Pope Benedict knows this very well. He is not quitting in the face of this crisis. Rather, he is resigning his office in order to follow the call to seek God in prayer, to offer the sufferings of his present physical condition in humility and silence before God.

It seems appropriate to revisit a point central to the eight years of Benedict's pontificate, because the secularized world cannot really understand why he has made his decision. A world without God does not understand the value of prayer, and therefore has no understanding of what Benedict means when he says he desires to "continue to serve the Church" by offering himself to God in prayer. Benedict lives a relationship with Christ in the Church, and he is now turning to prayer not simply for "practical" reasons. These constitute some of the circumstances he faces, of course, but at its core his decision is motivated by the conviction that this is the path of his vocation, the next step in a lifetime of hungering for God and seeking to know Him more intimately in an ever deeper personal encounter with Jesus Christ. He knows too that this hidden life is not an escape, but a profound way of entering into a deeper communion with his brothers and sisters, a way of offering himself to Christ in the communion of the Church in the context of his present sufferings, after a long life of dedicated pastoral service.

I am confident that his prayers will sustain his successor so that he can give a strong and attentive witness to the truth about God and His love for us in Jesus Christ--the truth that is everywhere attacked, ignored, or falsified with cheap substitutes.

My "introduction" has turned into a post of its own. Nevertheless, let me present the thoughts of last year, given in the context of the words of the Pope. Here is the post of February 17, 2012, which was called Secularization, Transcendence, and Love:


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Sometimes we throw around terms like "secularism" and "the secularized West." It is important to be precise about what this means. Terms like these are not intended to cast "the secular world" in a negative light. Rather they are intended to express an ideological and practical attitude that limits the human person to the life of this finite world. Pope Benedict XVI explains it very concisely:

"Secularization, which presents itself in cultures by imposing a world and humanity without reference to Transcendence, is invading every aspect of daily life and developing a mentality in which God is effectively absent, wholly or partially, from human life and awareness."

Secularism imprisons the human person within the confines of "the world." Sometimes it restricts itself to the world as human beings immediately perceive it (e.g. materialism). But it can allow for the affirmation of "deeper realities," and for the development of human beings and the universe under the influence of "mysterious" natural powers (e.g. the many kinds of spiritualisms that flourish today, as well as a reductionist view of religion).

Secularism is a proposal of life "without reference to Transcendence." The essence of secularism is its effort to smother the deepest reality in the life of every human person, that thirst for the Infinite that shapes every human heart. The "transcendence" that Pope Benedict speaks of here is not just any kind of "going beyond" the surface of things. It is the Beyond-all-things, that Mystery which energizes the human person and is the ultimate goal of every human aspiration. Secularism seeks to suffocate this "restlessness" of the human heart.

It does not forbid a person to be "religious" (provided that "religion" is reduced to a human system, or a set of rules that rest on human contrivance, whether ancient or new). It does not have a problem with "spirituality" as long as the "spirit" remains in the finite prison of its own idealism, or of the occult. Secularism is even compatible with talk about God. But it wants to eliminate the search for God, the hunger for God, and of course, love for God.

Above all, however, secularism cannot abide the amazing fact that the Transcendent God --the Mystery that every human heart yearns for--has entered history and dwells among us in the very midst of our world. In the end, this is why secularism is doomed to fail: because God wills to make Himself known, because He loves us. He loves every human person, even the most determined secularists who appear to have forgotten all about Him.

The witness to Jesus Christ as God's loving gift of Himself is difficult in our secularized culture. But let us never forget that His grace is at work.