Getting off the grid and leaving behind the city is a great way to bring some much-needed silence to one’s life, Pope Benedict XVI said. “Silence is the condition of one’s surroundings that best fosters contemplation, listening to God and meditation,” he said Aug. 10 as he held his weekly general audience in the courtyard of the papal summer villa at Castel Gandolfo. “Just the fact of being able to enjoy silence, to let oneself, as it were, be ‘filled’ by silence, predisposes us to prayer,” the pope said. Many people spend a few days at a monastic community or spiritual center, which, as “places of the spirit, are a backbone of the world,” he said. Monastic communities have been built in beautiful places that are close to nature, he said. He said such places bring together two important elements: the beauty of creation and the Creator, and silence that comes from “being far from the city and major channels of communication.”
CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (CNS)