The Still Hands That Serve

In a Trappist monastery in Kentucky, a brother spent twenty years in the silence. Each morning before dawn, he sat in centering prayer, releasing every thought, every ambition, every image of himself as useful. He descended into what John of the Cross called the dark night — that stripping away where God dissolves our need to be needed.

Then one Tuesday, without fanfare, he was assigned to the guest house. Visitors noticed something unsettling about him. He poured coffee as though the cup were sacred. He listened to their anxious stories without rushing toward solutions. When he changed the linens, his hands moved with a stillness that made the room feel like a chapel.

"How do you serve so freely?" a retreatant once asked him.

He paused — the Contemplative pause that is itself a kind of prayer. "For twenty years, God emptied me of my servant complex. I had to stop serving before I could actually serve. The ego wants to help. Only love wants to wash feet."

Paul writes in Galatians 5:13, "Through love, serve one another." Thomas Merton understood this sequence matters. The love must come first — not duty, not guilt, not the subtle pride of being the one who gives. Love is formed in silence, in the patient work of letting God dismantle our false self.

Before you serve your neighbor this week, sit in five minutes of silence. Let God empty your hands so they become His.