Silence Makes Room for Christ

In Chapter 6, St. Benedict speaks of silence as a necessary discipline for guarding the heart and creating space for God to act. Caryll Houselander, in The Reed of God, echoes this same truth when she writes about making room for Christ to grow within us, as Mary did—not through effort or words, but through interior stillness and surrender. For both Benedict and Houselander, silence is not withdrawal from love but a womb of love, a receptive space where Christ can take form in the soul. Benedict’s restraint of speech and Houselander’s image of the heart as a hollow reed point to the same spiritual reality: when we quiet ourselves and loosen our grip on constant expression, we allow Christ to live and speak within us. Silence, then, is not absence, but availability—a way of consenting to God’s presence so that Christ may be formed in us for the life of the world.