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Why God Speaks in Silence: A Clear Creek Monk at the Camp Out | The Catholic Man Show
Eleven years now the monks of Clear Creek have let a field full of Catholic men camp on their land, and Adam opened the show by thanking Fr. Francis Bethel for the charity it takes to put up with them. Father said they don't bother the monks at all. They do their best to keep it that way. Adam admitted he feels something every time he drives onto the property, and Father said that's what people tell him all the time: they come through the front gate and feel peace. For the monks, that's not an experience. That's just Tuesday. This one was recorded live at Eagle's Landing in front of a camp audience, with a chess game going a few feet away and a sudden downpour hammering the tent halfway through. Father didn't flinch. Sponsor: Select International Tours When Adam and Dave decided to lead their first pilgrimage, they asked around about who to work with, and the same name came back every time. Having used Select now, they can vouch for it. Wherever in the world you want to go, leading a pilgrimage or joining one, go to selectinternationaltours.com and see what they've got ready for you. Father's new book is From Silence to Silence: A Benedictine Pilgrimage to God's Sanctuary (TAN Books), and he built it like a journey. He wishes it had drawings. The first one would be a man whittling a staff, which is the equipment chapter: faith, hope, charity, the faculties God already put in you. Then the man walks into a rough, dark woods with no path. That's where the ascetical work happens: exterior silence, ordering the passions and the imagination, learning to use words for God. Then a path appears and you can see a church glimmering in the distance, and the meditation begins on God's transcendence, his beauty, his love. Then you find the sanctuary sits on top of a cliff you can't climb, and God has to lift you the rest of the way. The last part is a man at the window, looking in. Father ends the book with St. Augustine, who finished On the Trinity as an old man after starting it young, longing to enter the silence where we'll all say one word together. The distinction that runs through the whole conversation is that silence isn't the same thing as the absence of noise. The absence of noise is neutral. The silence Father is after is rich, full, ordered. It's St. Francis up all night repeating "My God and my all," a handful of words carrying his whole life. It's Aquinas laying down his pen and calling the Summa straw. You only get there after a lot of meditating on God, and then all of it gathers into one loving gaze. Why does it matter? Because without it you get torn in every direction by your emotions and the images coming at you all day. Father quoted a priest friend who preached a retreat at Clear Creek: God wants you to do what you're doing, and the devil wants you to do everything but what you're doing. He quoted St. Bernard too. If you want to clean the inside, shut the windows and keep the dust out. Then the practical part. Father walked through the monastic day, from the Great Silence after Compline to the only real social time, which is recreation after lunch. One of the guys described the version he runs at home: quiet until eight every morning, a minute of silent prayer for every year of your age, then chores in silence. Father's advice on how much time to give: John Senior used to say tithe it, a tenth of your day, plus a day of retreat a month and a few days a year. And his favorite line of the night came from the old monks at Fontgombault who'd lived through World War II. It's very hard to pray during a bombardment, they were told. They answered that it's quite easy to pray during a bombardment if you're actually being bombed. Stick around for the podcast tail, where Father tells the story of John Senior telling an EWTN audience to smash their televisions, and the old man who never stopped wishing he'd been a cowboy. Raise your glass. TOPICS COVEREDEleven years of the TCMS Camp Out on the grounds of Clear Creek AbbeyWhy people say they feel peace the moment they come through the front gatePax and Ora et Labora as the "unofficial" Benedictine mottosHow TAN Books came to Fr. Bethel asking for a Benedictine voice, and his one-word answer when they proposed silenceHis first visit to Fontgombault, arriving just in time for Vespers, and the presence he felt as the monks came in to a single bellThe book's four-part pilgrimage: the staff, the dark woods, the cliff, and the window into the sanctuaryWhy the spiritual life starts with looking at God, not with self-purificationExterior silence, ordered passions, and the silence of wordsMeditating on God's transcendence and beauty as a path toward his silenceWhy there's always a silence beyond our true ideas about GodAquinas calling the Summa straw, and St. Francis repeating "My God and my all" through the nightHow a monk writes a book an hour at a time, and why gluing old talks together didn't workWhether a man can grow spiritually without silence at allSpiritual conversion and moral conversion as the two sides of the interior life"God wants you to do what you're doing, the devil wants you to do everything but what you're doing"Photography, images, and how recent the problem of pornography really isWhy so many people are afraid of silence and fill their lives with noiseSilence versus the absence of noise, and why the second one is neutralSt. Bernard on shutting the windows to keep out the dustTeaching that flows from interior silence, and why John Senior is the example that comes to mindWhy God's language is silence: the one Word the Father speaks, in St. John of the CrossWhy God doesn't just send you an email with his will for your lifeCustody of the senses at work, and St. John of the Cross on the images you weren't looking forThe vice of curiosity, the internet, the news cycle, and a phone that distracts you even when it's offWhether the monks order from AmazonThe monastic Great Silence, from Compline to Prime, and the rhythm of a monk's dayWhy monks don't talk in the church or in the halls outside the cellsBringing the Great Silence home: quiet until eight, a minute of prayer per year of age, chores in silenceHow much time a husband and father owes God: John Senior's tithe of the dayA day of retreat a month, a few days a year, and Ember Days at Clear CreekPraying during a bombardment, according to the monks who survived oneWhether silence can become utilitarian, and why it's about a relationship, not nirvanaSilence, patience, and how growing in one virtue grows the othersEjaculatory prayers, and nourishing silence with a few words from time to timeWill heaven be silent or full of singing? Both at onceJohn Senior, Fr. Fessio, EWTN, and "smash your TVs"John Senior running away at 13 to be a cowboy, and still wishing it at 75Wonder and silence in John Senior and Dennis QuinnWho the book was written for: lay beginners, with a hope that a lot of nuns read it too REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODEGuest: Fr. Francis Bethel, OSB, monk and subprior of Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey, professed in 1977 and ordained in 1983, one of the founding monks who came from Fontgombault, and a teacher of dogmatic theology at the abbey Fr. Bethel's books: From Silence to Silence: A Benedictine Pilgrimage to God's Sanctuary (TAN Books, 2025). Available from the Clear Creek gift shopJohn Senior and the Restoration of Realism, his earlier book, which he said took about ten years Places: Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey, Hulbert, OklahomaAbbey of Notre-Dame de Fontgombault, France, the motherhouse of Clear CreekEagle's Landing, the Camp Out site at Clear Creek Saints and spiritual writers: St. Augustine, On the Trinity (De Trinitate), and its closing prayer about saying "one thing" together in God. Augustine's own line about the work, that he began it as a young man and published it as an old man, comes from his prefatory letter to Bishop AureliusSt. Thomas Aquinas, the Summa Theologiae, and calling his work straw near the end of his lifeSt. Francis of Assisi, "My God and my all"St. Bernard of Clairvaux, on shutting the windows to keep out the dust (paraphrased on air)St. John of the Cross, on the one Word the Father speaks in eternal silenceSt. Ephrem the Syrian, quoted on air on speech as silver and silence as gold (attribution as given on air; the saying is best known as a proverb)St. Paul, praying that we have a sense of God's willSt. Teresa, on her calm and getting things done quickly (the saint was not clearly named on air)Dom Paul Delatte, Benedictine abbot of Solesmes, and his Commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict, read in the monasteryThe old monks of Fontgombault who lived through World War II Teachers and authors: John Senior, the Integrated Humanities Program, and his influence on the founding of Clear...
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