“Be still and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10

"In the morning, long before dawn, he got up and left the house, and went off to a lonely place and prayed there." (Mark 1:35)

In the middle of sentences loaded with action - healing suffering people, casting out devils, responding to impatient disciples, travelling from town to town and preaching from synagogue to synagogue - we find these quiet words: "In the morning, long before dawn, he got up and left the house, and went off to a lonely place and prayed there."In the centre of breathless activities we hear a restful breathing. Surrounded by hours of moving we find a moment of quiet stillness. In the heart of such involvement there are words of withdrawal. In the midst of action there is contemplation. And after much togetherness there is solitude. The more I read this nearly silent sentence locked between loud words of action, the more I have the sense that the secret of Jesus' ministry is hidden in that lonely place where he went to pray, early in the morning, long before dawn.

In a world of many words that have lost their meaning, we need space for silence. Somehow we know that without silence words lose their meaning, we know that without listening, speaking no longer heals, and that without distance closeness cannot cure. Somewhere we know that without a lonely place our actions quickly become empty gestures. The careful balance between silence and words, withdrawal and involvement, distance and closeness, solitude and community forms the basis of the Christian life and should therefore be the subject of our most personal attention.

A life without a lonely place, a life without a quiet centre, easily becomes destructive. When we cling to the results of our actions as our only way of self-identification, then we become possessive and defensive and tend to look at our fellow human beings more as enemies to be kept at a distance than as friends with whom we share gifts of life. Without solitude our lives are dissipated and dispersed by countless pressures and expectations, conventions and meetings, good works and endless recreations. Without solitude we lack any real centre as persons, and lose communion with God.

Solitude does not simply mean creating a time for ourselves, where we will not be bothered by others. It is not about escape from the world and its troubles, and being enclosed in oneself. Genuine solitude does not take us out of the world and from our neighbour. That would be solipsism. Instead solitude leads us more deeply into communion with others and into a more fruitful involvement with the world for its salvation. Solitude is not a self-serving exercise, but a God-seeking desire. Solitude is much more than a time to recharge our batteries or a time to lick the wounds we incurred in the rough and tumble of life. A time aside may well help in rejuvenating us, but it becomes solitude only when it involves an encounter with the Lord and an on-going conversion of heart. Solitude brings us into dialogue with the Lord in the depths of our hearts, confronting us with our weakness and our sinfulness, and disposing us to rely more fully on the mercy of the Lord for our healing.

Solitude is primarily a way of the heart. It is the call of the heart to enter within oneself to that quiet place where we encounter the Beloved. It is the place of interior communion with the Lord, within which we hear the gentle voice, and where we discover our true identity in him. Jesus said: “When you pray, go to your private room and, when you have shut the door, pray to your Father who is in that secret place…” (Mt.6:6). This text is often interpreted as a journey within. Jesus’ own life is an example in the practice of solitude (see Mt.4:1-11 – he spent forty days and forty nights in the desert before confronting the devil; Mt.14:13 – when he received the news of John the Baptist’s death, he withdrew from there and went to a lonely place; Mt.14:23 – after the miraculous feeding of the five thousand, Jesus went up by himself to a mountainside; Lk.6:12 – before he chose the Twelve, he spent the entire night alone in the desert hills).

For the Desert Fathers it was not just a matter of going to their cells to pray, but to go within themselves to the interior “cell” where they would meet the Lord. Francis of Assisi who knew that his brothers would be itinerant evangelists, told them to take their cells with them – in their hearts – and never to leave this place of encounter with God. He insisted that evangelists must first draw from hidden prayer what they want to communicate to others. Catherine of Sienna always sought to stay within the “inner cell” where we could know both God and ourselves. In solitude we pay attention to the Lord; we listen to the quiet voice of the Shepherd gently leading us.

Solitude is the way of self-knowledge. It is essential for spiritual growth. It helps us to be real about what is happening in our lives at any particular time. In solitude we are confronted with the “many voices” that conflict with the voice of the Good Shepherd, and we find ourselves needing to choose more decisively for Jesus and His kingdom. In solitude the Spirit confronts us with the “false self” which is shaped by the world and exposes the true state of our heart in all its deviousness. In solitude we become more aware of the inner compulsions to greed, lust, and power. In the solitude we can quieten down sufficiently within ourselves to tune into the movement of God, and to become more aware of the demons that afflict us. In solitude we find ourselves in touch with our utter poverty, our brokenness and sinfulness before God, and we are given the grace to turn to the Lord with confidence in his mercy.

In solitude we can slowly unmask the illusion of our possessiveness and discover in the centre of our own self that we are not what we can conquer, but what is given to us. In solitude we can listen to the voice of him who spoke to us before we could speak a word, who healed us before we could make any gesture to help, who set us free before we could free others, and who loved us long before we could give love to anyone. It is in this solitude that we discover that being is more important than having, and that we are worth more than the result of our efforts. In solitude we discover that our life is not a possession to be defended, but a gift to be shared. It is there that we recognise that the healing words we speak are not just our own, but are given to us; that the new life we bring forth is not a property to cling to, but a gift to be received.

In solitude we become aware that our worth is not the same as our usefulness. In solitude we can grow old freely without being preoccupied with our usefulness and we can offer a service which we had not planned on. To the degree that we have lost our dependencies on this world, whatever world means - father, mother, children, career, success or rewards - we can form a community of faith in which there is little to defend but much to share; because as a community of faith, we take the world seriously but never too seriously.

And as a community of faith we would work hard, but we would not destroyed by the lack of results. As a community of faith we would remind one another constantly that we form a fellowship of the weak and vulnerable creatures who remain transparent to him who speaks to us in the lonely places of our existence and says: "Do not be afraid, you are accepted."

When we are able to create a lonely place in the middle of your actions and concerns, our successes and failures can will begin to lose some of their power over us. For then our love for this world will merge with a compassionate understanding of its illusions. Then our serious engagement will merge with an unmasking smile. Then our concern for others will be motivated more by their need than our own. In short: nurtured by the practice of solitude, we can care.

Let us therefore live our lives to the fullest, but let us not forget, once in a while, to get up long before dawn to leave the house and go to a lonely place.