Life and Writings of Brother Rafael
Posted by macrina on October 20, 2009
Since Brother Rafael was canonised on October 11th 2009 we have been having extracts of his life and writings at Vigils. I will post some of these over the next few days.
The Tranquil Sea
30th July 1936
The Cistercian life is a life of silence; it is not to be wondered at, therefore, that the Cistercian monk finds in it his motive for meditation, or rather; that silence is a medium …. the place where the spiritual life unfolds.
Silence is like a sea on which our thoughts sail.
And as the sea is crossed by all kinds of boats, sometimes small sloops, at other times by proud and majestic shops, so the sea of our silence is also populated sometimes by small schooners with white sails, at other times by scrubby fishing boats that send up a lot of smoke, and at other times by trans-oceanic liners that sail serenely and majestically through the waters.
The silent life can very well be compared to the sea, a calm and tranquil sea. The soul in silence is like the sea, unruffled by the slightest breeze. Through this silent soul sail thoughts of God. The more silence, the more the peace and serenity enable it to be in the presence of God.
The Trappist is in love with his silence, as is the sailor with the sea.
But in life all is not peace. The pilot often struggles through tempestuous waters. These waters are not always still and sometimes grow weary of being calm, and roar, and hurl themselves furiously against the shores, as if they were the cause of its ill humour. so it happens with the soul that, being quiet in God, finds its peace disturbed by failures in silence.
The monk, when breaking silence, involuntarily speaks of worldly things, of his memories, of his tastes and desires …. of himself. And so the sea is agitated.
Ah, if he spoke only of God …. but even then, it is so difficult to avoid offending God with the tongue! Let us be silent then we Cistercian monks. We came to the monastery to seek God in the silence of our souls …. let us be silent, and let us not agitate the waters of our recollections, of our passions, of our self-love.
Let us be silent, when we are being consoled by the divine Jesus, as well as when we are alone with our Cross.
Let us be silent. Let us keep silence, for in it we will find, if we know how to look for it, our treasure, which is God.
Let us then love silence, as the sailor loves the sea.
Let us pull away from the shore …. let us sail out to sea, where we no longer see land and the horizon merges with the sky; let us raise our eyes to the heights where God is; and then we will see that our peace in the world grows to the degree that our silence does, and it will be complete when it is as wide as the seas that cover the earth.
The Virgin Mary star that guides seamen, will lead us and enlighten us when we enter the night of our solitudes.
The life of the Cistercian monk is …. love of God, love of Mary and silence among men.
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