I recently went on my annual retreat to New Melleray Abbey, a Trappist monastery.  

Established in 1849 as a foundation from Melleray Abbey in Ireland, monks have been living a cloistered contemplative vocation there for almost 180 years.

Since the first time I went there in 1983, I have felt embraced by God in that holy place with an astonishing and palpable immediacy.

Prayer in the Gothic stone chapel is an absorption into the silence and mystery of the Lord, unlike anything I have experienced anywhere else.

This monastery is my spiritual center, holy ground which magnetizes me to return time and again.

The need for solitude

While at New Melleray most recently, I read a book, The Hermitage Within, written anonymously by a monk, a reflection addressed to hermits, but one with a message applicable to all who love the spiritual life and want to be serious about prayer.

The author reflects on how so often in the Scriptures, the wilderness is the place of encounter with God.

The desert is a dry, lifeless expanse, devoid of civilization, life, and distraction, an arid emptiness which most people take pains to avoid.

Yet, it is in the wilderness where the Lord reveals Himself to the Israelites, giving the Law and establishing the Covenant during their long sojourn to the Promised Land.

St. John the Baptist lives in the desert, proclaiming the Advent of the Messiah in the deserted wastes outside Jerusalem.

Jesus Himself, driven by the Holy Spirit, goes to the wilderness to pray, fast, and resist the devil before He begins His public ministry.

After his dramatic conversion, St. Paul goes off to the Arabian desert for three years (Galatians 1:17-18) to absorb the import of what just spiritually happened to him and to prepare for his arduous life of preaching the Gospel.

St. Mary Magdalene journeyed to France after Pentecost, both evangelizing others but also embracing a sacred solitude in a remote cave.

A search for silence

Our world of frenetic activity, constant stimulation, perpetual noise, and fleeting distraction seems often to be a conspiracy to keep us so exhausted, busy, and confused that the inner life of the Holy Spirit flickers out within our soul.  

The silence and solitude of the wilderness indict our culture, which encourages us to be in perpetual motion, constantly seeking the next amusement, possession, achievement, or experience.

When I sit in the chapel at New Melleray and begin to breathe in the peace of the stone walls, I realize how often my committed activity, list of goals to accomplish, and the constant inner dialogue of my mind, as good as many of these things may be, keep me from simply being present to God.

Desert experiences, like retreats, can strip away the illusions and superficialities of our life in the world, and compel us to simply stand before God in all His radical simplicity with no walls, excuses, explanations, or barriers between ourselves and His silent, mysterious presence.

God is calling us

Like the spiritual giants in the Scriptures mentioned above or the Desert Fathers and Mothers who lived a radical asceticism in solitude, we too are called to a life of deep prayer and union with God.

While we cannot live in the wilderness and most of us do not have the luxury to go off to a monastery for a few days, the Lord does call us to build a hermitage in our hearts, a sacred place of silence and peace where we can commune with God in stillness.

I encourage everyone, beginning with myself, to find a place and time each day to be with the Lord.

We might create a prayer corner or home altar in our house where we can go to pray alone.  

We could rise 20 minutes earlier than we do now to give our hearts to the Lord at day’s beginning.

Maybe we go to Eucharistic Adoration, or pray the Rosary as we walk through the neighborhood after work.

Prayer is so essential to our lives as Christians that without it, our Faith can easily be a simple fulfillment of duty or an external ritual.

Go deep with the Lord this summer. Enter the wilderness. Do not fear silence or solitude. God is waiting for your heart there.