I guess, before artificial lighting and electricity, that night had an intensity we dulled with all our things. I’m not suggesting we jettison our modern conveniences, but before televisions and radios and computers and electric lighting, I imagine the night hours were different. We hold back the night with 24 cable programming and snacks that are always ready for the microwave. The night, though, in its bare silence gives a beautiful gift if we listen to it. Benedict knows the gift of these silent hours. He says in chapter 42, “Monks should diligently cultivate silence at all times, but especially at night.” “On leaving Compline,” he says, “no one will be permitted to speak further.” During the night hours, talking is set aside, and we listen only to silence.

If we set aside the cell phone and the television lighting up the bedroom we might find night’s gifts opening to us like the flower that blooms only in the darkness. Monk, Basil Pennington, says: “There is something about the deepness of that bottoming of nature’s daily cycle (even in the city where it might still be punctuated by police sirens, the clatter of garbage collectors, and the fights of alley cats) that opens out the deeper recesses of the spirit and lets its truer language surface.”

Tonight maybe we hear Benedict’s direction, and as the day slips away we turn off the television and put down our phone and only listen to the quiet voice of the nighttime hours.