Advent is the season of the Word. We sometimes muse on its contemplative
character as a season of quiet expectation.
But look around: Christmas tinsel
and trees and stars flash gold and red and green from storefronts and
neighborhood porches, Santa and the reindeer, complete with Rudolph’s red nose,
gallop across rooftops to the tune of Jingle Bells, crooners dream of a white
Christmas over in-store speakers.
Blinking lights, sound systems pouring out endless variations of
familiar nostalgia, boisterous crowds cramming the aisles and competing for holiday
bargains: our Christmas preparations are
nothing if not noisy!
How can we hear the Word coming amid all that racket? We might look to Mary, the Mother of Jesus,
as she prepared for the birth of her Child in Palestine over two millennia
ago. Life in a small village like
Nazareth or a larger town like Bethlehem was far from quiet. People lived together in large families
crammed into homes that rarely had more than one room, maybe two at most, and a flat
roof. People spent their days in
the street a lot of the time, drawing water at a communal well, carrying dough to a communal bake
oven, standing in doorways shouting conversations to one another above the din
of passing donkeys and yelling children.
Artistic renderings of a young woman seated alone in an empty room with
an open book on her knee are probably wishful thinking.
That said, we actually have no gospel account of how Mary
spent the nine months preceding Jesus’ birth except the story of her trek over
the hills to visit her elderly pregnant cousin Elizabeth and the story of her
second trek from Nazareth to Bethlehem before her son was born. Neither journey could have been solitary,
allowing her simply to soak in the silent scenery as a backdrop to her inner
musings on the angel’s startling words.
Young women didn’t travel around the countryside unchaperoned and
unprotected. Even had Joseph gone with
her, they would have needed other companions for safety and propriety. And, later, the road to Bethlehem was no doubt
crowded with many travelers headed there, as Joseph and Mary did, to register
for the Emperor’s census. People
shouting greetings, drivers loudly cursing stubborn pack animals, dogs barking
as they passed through villages, donkeys braying, flies buzzing, maybe even
children clamoring for alms or trying to sell fruit to the travelers: that trip to Bethlehem hardly provided a
quiet milieu for maternal reflection.
In a later in the story, after the shepherds had left the
stable where the little family from Nazareth was housed, Luke’s gospel gives us
a clue about Mary’s pondering: “Mary
kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). Mary, in
Luke’s gospel, was a listener par excellence. When the angel disrupted her life with news
that she would conceive and bear a Son, and an extraordinary one at that, she
took God’s Word not only into her mind but into her heart and, literally, into
every fiber of her being because this Word was not just the sounds the angel
made but the very Word of God later understood to be the second Person of the
Holy Trinity. Every mother can say that
she nurtures her child to birth with her love, certainly, but also with her
life’s blood, her endocrine system, her muscles and nerves, her energy, her
emotions—everything she is. Mary
listened to the Word with an intensity and focus of mind, heart and being that
gives us a hint of what it really means to listen to the Word with the ears of
the heart, even from the lesser intimacy of people not called to mother the Word physically.
Advent, the season of the Word, is therefore also the season for honing our listening. St. Benedict never mentions Advent or
Christmas. It is impossible to date the
origin of the Advent season. Scholars
suggest it was in place in the West by 480, the year of St. Benedict’s birth,
but we don’t know how widespread it was during his lifetime. Nevertheless, St. Benedict gives us some guidance
for honing our listening skills in preparation for the coming of the
Word—whether during Advent, at Christmas, or in everyday life—in Chapter 49 of
the Rule on Lent and in fact throughout the world.
Let’s take a look at some of what he proposes to make us
better listeners. In RB 49, he tells us
to give up “evil habits.” These need not
be immoral practices. It seems possible
to read into the unfolding chapter the notion that any habit can become “evil”
if it takes over so much time, energy, and physical capacity that it prevents
us from turning readily to “holy reading” and to prayer. Too much food and
drink and too much sleep are examples. (Ah, those pre- Christmas parties
overflowing with goodies!) That may be an unwarranted stretch in reading
Chapter 49, but it surely fits the general approach of the Rule in structuring
a way of life where “holy reading” (lectio divina) and prayer are given pride
of place. St. Benedict’s structures,
taken literally, won’t fit life outside a monastery and sometimes don’t
actually fit life inside the monastery today, but they do give us food for
thought in this season of learning to listen more deeply to the Word by seeking
a more balanced life.
St. Benedict also tells us to quit making so much noise
ourselves. He recommends that we give up
“needless talking and idle jesting.” We
can’t listen if we’re always chattering!
And neither can those around us. St. Benedict does not confine this advice to Lent. Chapter 6 on “Restraint of Speech” sets
taciturnity as a valuable goal for the everyday life of a listener. The chapter makes good Advent reading.
Finally, not in Chapter 49 but throughout the Rule, St.
Benedict urges us over and over to pursue relationships of peace: to live together in humility, to seek
forgiveness for offenses given, to respect one another, to grow into a people
characterized by love. Chapter 4,
Chapter 7, and Chapter 72 are prime sources here. We cannot listen intently to God’s word when
we are busy rerunning arguments, defending ourselves against slights, stoking
up anger, climbing over others’ heads to get ahead, or engaging in any of the other ways in
which we focus on ourselves at the expense of others. The God who speaks is, in every such scenario, the voice in the background that we are blotting out.
This brings us back to Mary, the Listener. It is easy for us to excuse ourselves from intensifying
our life as listeners on the grounds that the world around us is always noisily
on the go, especially in this pre-Christimas season. However, Mary does not seem to have waited
for a noise-free environment to listen to the Word within her. She must have been able to withdraw from the
noisy surface of life into a quiet heart where the ears of her heart were
always attuned to God’s voice. The Rule
does try to create a quiet environment for those who live in monasteries, but
far more important for all of us is the wisdom St. Benedict offers us on the
asceticism of becoming listeners by withdrawing from all the ways in which we
ourselves cultivate inner as well as outer noise.
During Advent, then, think about picking out relevant
passages from the Prologue, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, and Chapter 72 and “reflecting
on them in [your] heart” (Lk 2:19) so that at Christmas you are better able than you are right now to receive God's Word in the depths of your being.
Copyright 2015, Abbey of St. Walburga
