What Monks Can Teach Us About Stillness This Holy Week

If you’ve never seen the 2005 documentary Into Great Silence, this week is the perfect time to add it to your list. 

The film shows the everyday lives and world of Carthusian monks living in silence in the Grande Chartreuse monastery, near Grenoble, France. Except for a few moments of spoken prayer, chanting and one interview with one of the monks, the film lacks any narration or musical score. 

Anyone who regularly reads this blog is probably not in a religious order and is most certainly not a Carthusian monk. 

But as we enter Holy Week, we too can experience the transformative power of intentional silence in our daily lives and activities.

Our modern world is a world of noise. Slack notifications, ads, music, traffic. In some ways, this noise is an expression of our inner chaos as a society and as individuals as we constantly juggle competing priorities and end up living in a compulsive hurry. In silence we face ourselves, our emotions, our questions, and it is supremely uncomfortable.

While there’s no obligation to practice a more silent lifestyle during Holy Week, taking steps to be less busy and less stimulated by constant noise can help us spend time with Christ throughout the day by keeping Him ever-present in our hearts. 

St. John of the Cross, one of the Catholic Church’s greatest contemplatives, highlighted the importance and necessity of preserving peace in our lives, saying  “Strive to preserve your heart in peace; let no event of this world disturb” and “It is best to learn to silence the faculties and to cause them to be still so that God may speak.” 

As business leaders, entrepreneurs and active members of our families, our lives are meant to look different from the hushed world of a Carthusian monastery. But this is all the more of a reason to set Holy Week apart.

During this final week of the Lenten season and especially during the Easter Triduum (the Latin word meaning “three days” and the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of Holy Week) consider condensing your spiritual “to-do list” into one simple task: Embrace silence so as to truly be with God during this time. 

St. John of the Cross, pray for us that we might be silent so as to draw our hearts closer to Christ as we commemorate His Passion.