In the quiet rhythm of our beautiful Abbey, where the hours are marked not by noise but by bell and quiet praise, today’s Gospel settles gently among us like a familiar task returned to our hands. It speaks of a calling that is deceptively simple: to be something for the world, rather than merely to do something within it. Here at Our Lady of Silence Abbey, we are reminded that vocation is not a performance, but a presence.
Life in a Cistercian monastery can appear hidden, even irrelevant, to a world that measures worth by visibility and output. Stone walls, silence, prayer repeated day after day—what difference could such a life possibly make? And yet the Gospel quietly unsettles that doubt. It suggests that what truly gives flavour to the world, what truly allows others to see clearly, often works without announcement. It does not shout. It does not draw attention to itself. It simply is, faithful to its nature.
Salt, once it loses its essence, becomes indistinguishable from the dust beneath our feet. Light, when hidden out of fear or false humility, fails those who need it most. The warning here is not dramatic, but it is serious: a life emptied of its interior truth becomes bland, and a faith concealed out of comfort grows dim. This is not a call to grand gestures, but to integrity. To live so fully aligned with God that our very existence—whether noticed or not—changes the atmosphere around us.
As Lent approaches, the Church gently begins to turn our attention inward. Soon we will be invited to fast, to simplify, to return to the essentials. But this Gospel reminds us that such practices are never ends in themselves. They are meant to restore flavour where it has faded, to clear the glass where light has been obscured. In the monastery, Lent does not dramatically alter our external life; rather, it sharpens it. Silence deepens. Prayer becomes more honest. The small acts—work in the fields, meals shared, psalms chanted—are stripped of excess so that their meaning may shine through.
There is a temptation, especially in religious life, to confuse humility with disappearance. To believe that holiness requires erasing oneself entirely. But the Gospel does not ask us to vanish. It asks us to be placed rightly. Light is not meant to dominate the room, only to make it possible to see. Salt does not overwhelm the meal; it draws out what is already there. So too the Christian life, whether lived in a monastery or in the midst of family and work, is meant to reveal God’s goodness already present in the world—not by force, but by fidelity.
From the stillness of this abbey, overlooking fields shaped by centuries of quiet labour, we sense again the truth that the world does not need more noise. It needs lives that are coherent, grounded, and luminous from within. As we move slowly toward Lent, may we allow God to restore what has grown dull in us, to rekindle what has been covered over, and to place us—humbly but confidently—where our lives may give taste, and offer light, to those who pass by.