The Power of Silence

by Robert Cardinal Sarah,

  22. In I Want to See God, Father Marie-Eugène wrote:

  We live in a fever of movement and activity. The evil is not simply in the organization of modern life, in the haste that it imposes on what we do, the rapidity and facility that it affords our changing of place. A more profound evil is in the feverish nervousness of temperaments. People no longer know how to wait and be silent. And yet, they appear to be seeking silence and solitude; they leave familiar circles for new horizons, another atmosphere. Most often, however, this is only so as to divert themselves with fresh impressions.

  Whatever changes time may bring, God remains the same, Tu autem idem Ipse es; and it is always in silence that He utters His Word and that the soul must receive it. The law of silence is imposed on us as on Teresa. The high-strung excitability of the modern temperament makes it more urgently important, and exacts of us a more resolute effort to respect and to submit to it.

  Sounds and emotions detach us from ourselves, whereas silence always forces man to reflect upon his own life.

  23. Mankind must join a sort of resistance movement. What will become of our world if it does not look for intervals of silence? Interior rest and harmony can flow only from silence. Without it, life does not exist. The greatest mysteries of the world are born and unfold in silence. How does nature develop? In the greatest silence. A tree grows in silence, and springs of water flow at first in the silence of the ground. The sun that rises over the earth in its splendor and grandeur warms us in silence. What is extraordinary is always silent.

  In his mother’s womb, an infant grows in silence. When a newborn is sleeping in his crib, his parents love to gaze at him in silence, so as not to awaken him; this spectacle can be contemplated only in silence, in wonder at the mystery of man in his original purity.

  24. The wonders of creation are silent, and we can admire them only in silence. Art, too, is the fruit of silence. How else but in silence can we contemplate a painting or a sculpture, the beauty of a color and the correctness of a form? Great music is listened to in silence. Wonder, admiration, and silence function in tandem. Popular, tasteless music is performed in an uproar, a pandemonium of shouting, a diabolical, exhausting commotion. It is not something one can listen to; it deafens man and makes him drunk with emptiness, confusion, and despair.

  We do not experience the same feelings, the same purity, the same elegance, the same elevation of mind and soul that we experience when we listen silently to Mozart, Berlioz, Beethoven, or Gregorian chant. Man enters then into a sacred dimension, into a celestial liturgy, at the threshold of purity itself. Here music, by its expressive character, by its ability to convert souls, causes the human heart to vibrate in unison with God’s heart. Here music rediscovers its sacredness and divine origin.

  According to Dom Mocquereau, a Benedictine monk of the Abbey of Solesmes:

  Plato has given us an excellent definition of music. “It is”, he says, “art so ordering sound as to reach the soul, inspiring a love of virtue.” He would have the best music to be that which most perfectly expresses the soul’s good qualities. “It is to serve no idle pleasures,” he says in another place, “that the Muses have given us harmony, whose movements accord with those of the soul, but rather to enable us thereby to order the ill-regulated motions of the soul, even as rhythm is given us to reform our manners, which in most men are so wanting in balance and in grace.” This was the high ideal which the Greeks had of music.

  25. The sentiments that emerge from a silent heart are expressed in harmony and silence. The great things in human life are experienced in silence, under God’s watchful eye.

  Silence is man’s greatest freedom. No dictatorship, no war, no barbarism can take this divine treasure away from him.

  In listening to you, we understand that although silence may be the absence of speech, it is above all the attitude of someone who listens. To listen is to welcome the other into one’s heart. Does Solomon not say, in the First Book of Kings (see 3:5-15), “Give me, Lord, a heart that listens”? He does not ask for riches or the life of his enemies or power, but a silent heart so as to listen to God.

  26. King Solomon asks God to make him a silent man, in other words, a true child of God. He wants neither riches nor glory nor victory over the enemy, but a heart that listens. In a contrary movement, the modern world transforms the person who listens into an inferior human being. With fatal arrogance, modernity exalts the man who is drunk with images and noisy slogans, while killing the interior man.

  27. The Carmelite Rule prescribes: “Be careful not to indulge in a great deal of talk, for. . . sin will not be wanting where there is much talk.” Indeed, Saint James the Apostle shows how important it is to mortify the tongue:

  If any one makes no mistakes in what he says he is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body also. If we put bits into the mouths of horses that they may obey us, we guide their whole bodies. Look at the ships also; though they are so great and are driven by strong winds, they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So the tongue is a little member and boasts of great things. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire!

  And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is an unrighteous world among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the cycle of nature, and set on fire by hell. For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brethren, this ought not to be so. (Jas 3:2-10)

  Saint James compares the tongue to the rudder of a boat. It is a little piece of wood that allows the whole ship to be steered. The man who holds his tongue controls his life, as the sailor directs the ship. Conversely, the man who talks too much is a ship adrift. Indeed, garrulousness, that unhealthy tendency to externalize all the treasures of the soul by displaying them in season and out of season, is supremely harmful to the spiritual life. It sets out in the direction opposite to that of the spiritual life, which ceaselessly becomes more interior and deeper so as to draw near to God. Carried away toward the outside by a need to say everything, the talkative person is far from God and from all profound activity. His life is spent entirely on his lips and spills out in floods of words that carry off the increasingly meager fruits of his thought and of his soul. For he no longer has the time or the inclination to recollect himself, to think, to live profoundly. Through the agitation that he creates around him, he interferes with the fruitful work and recollection of others. Superficial and vain, the talkative person is a dangerous being. The now widespread habit of testifying in public to the divine graces granted in the innermost depths of a man’s soul exposes him to the dangers of superficiality, the self-betrayal of his interior friendship with God, and vanity.

  28. We must learn, Thomas Merton says, that “the inviolability of one’s spiritual sanctuary, the center of the soul, depends on secrecy. Secrecy is the intellectual complement of a pure intention. . . . Keep all good things secret even from yourself. If we would find God in the depths of our souls, we have to leave everybody else outside, including ourselves.” It is disastrous, if we want to find God in our souls and to remain there with him, to try to communicate him to others as we see him. We could do so later with the grace that he gives us in silence and by the influence and transparency of our life.

  True witness is expressed by the silent, pure, radiant example of the sanctity of our life.

  29. Nowadays facile speech and the popularized image are the teachers of many lives. I have the sense that modern man does not know how to stop the uninterrupted flood of sententious, falsely moralizing speech and the bulimic need for corrupt icons.

  Silent lips seem impossible for people in the West. But the media also tempt African and Asian societies by driving them to lose themselves in a superabundant jungle of words, images, a
nd noises. The glowing screens need a gargantuan diet in order to distract mankind and destroy consciences. Keeping quiet has the appearance of being a weakness, a sort of ignorance or lack of will. In the modern system, the silent person becomes someone who does not know how to defend himself. He is subhuman. Conversely, the so-called strong man is a man of words. He crushes and drowns the other in the floods of his speeches.

  30. The silent man is no longer a sign of contradiction; he is just one man too many. Someone who speaks has importance and value, whereas another who keeps quiet gets little consideration. The silent man is reduced to nothingness. The simple act of speaking imparts value. Do the words make no sense? It makes no difference. Noise has acquired the nobility that silence once possessed.

  The man who speaks is celebrated, and the silent man is a poor beggar in whose presence there is no need even to raise one’s eyes.

  31. I will never stop thanking the good, holy priests who generously give their whole lives for the kingdom of God. But I will untiringly denounce those who are unfaithful to the promises of their ordination. In order to make themselves known or to impose their personal views, both on the theological and the pastoral level, they speak again and again. These clerics repeat the same banal things. I could not affirm that God dwells within them. Who can think their sheer outpourings to be a spring coming from the divine depths? But they talk, and the media love to listen to them in order to reecho their ineptitudes, particularly if they declare themselves in favor of the new posthumanist ideologies, in the realm of sexuality, the family, and marriage. These clerics consider God’s thinking about conjugal life to be an “evangelical ideal”. Marriage is no longer a requirement willed by God, modeled and manifested in the nuptial bond between Christ and the Church. Some theologians in their presumptuousness and arrogance go so far as to assert personal opinions that are difficult to reconcile with revelation, tradition, the centuries-old Magisterium of the Church, and the teaching of Christ. Thus, highly amplified by the blaring media, they go so far as to dispute God’s design.

  Have we not arrived at the fulfillment of the prophetic words of Paul VI, quoted by Jean Guitton in his book Paul VI secret:

  There is great turmoil at this time in the world and in the Church, and what is in dispute is the faith. . . . What strikes me, when I look at the Catholic world, is that within Catholicism a sort of non-Catholic thought seems to predominate sometimes, and it may happen tomorrow that this non-Catholic thought will become the strongest within Catholicism. But it will never represent the mind of the Church. A tiny little flock has to continue in existence, however small it may be.

  It is urgent to listen again to the voice of Saint Paul in his Second Letter to the Corinthians:

  For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word; but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ. (2 Cor 2:17)

  Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart. . . . We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. (2 Cor 4:1-2)

  Saint Ignatius of Antioch called on priests to “exhort [Christians] to live in harmony with the mind of God. Surely, Jesus Christ, our inseparable life, for His part is the mind of the Father, just as the bishops too, though appointed throughout the vast, wide earth, represent for their part the mind of Jesus Christ.” It is a serious responsibility for every bishop to be and to represent the mind of Christ. Bishops who scatter the sheep that Jesus has entrusted to them will be judged mercilessly and severely by God.

  32. In his Epistle to the Ephesians, Saint Ignatius gives the impression of severity when he discusses silence and fidelity to doctrine:

  It is better to keep silence and be something than to talk and be nothing. Teaching is an excellent thing, provided the speaker practices what he teaches. Now, there is one Teacher who spoke and it was done. But even what He did silently is worthy of the Father. He who has made the words of Jesus really his own is able also to hear His silence. Thus he will be perfect: he will act through his speech and be understood through his silence. Nothing is hidden from the Lord; no, even our secrets reach Him. Let us, then, do all things in the conviction that He dwells in us. Thus we shall be His temples and He will be our God within us. And this is the truth, and it will be made manifest before our eyes. Let us, then, love Him as He deserves. Do not be deceived, my brethren. Those who ruin homes will not inherit the kingdom of God. Now, if those who do this to gratify the flesh are liable to death, how much more a man who by evil doctrine ruins the faith in God, for which Jesus Christ was crucified! Such a filthy creature will go into the unquenchable fire, as will anyone that listens to him.

  33. Today many people are drunk on speaking, always agitated, incapable of silence or respect for others. They have lost their calm and dignity. Ben Sirach the Sage often recommends sobriety, prudence, and good manners when we are in society. If we are to avoid harming our soul and the souls of others and to prevent anything from causing us to have a serious fall in our conduct and in our words, moderation and reticence are necessary. In particular, he worries about our attitude when we are at table: “Wine drunk in season and temperately is rejoicing of heart and gladness of soul. Wine drunk to excess is bitterness of soul, with provocation and stumbling. Drunkenness increases the anger of a fool to his injury, reducing his strength and adding wounds” (Sir 31:28-30). As for Saint Albert of Jerusalem, the author of the Carmelite Rule, his response is simple. In order to avoid a fall, it is necessary to keep silent and to trust in the wisdom, the inspirations, and the silent action of God. One must not “offend the Spirit of grace”. The conquest of silence has the bitter taste of ascetical battles, but God willed this combat, which is within the reach of human effort.

  34. Without the silence that precedes it, speech runs the great risk of being useless chattering instead: “In quietness and in trust shall be your strength”, Isaiah said (Is 30:15). The prophet rebukes the people of Israel for their idolatrous activism, their turbulent political passions, made up of alliances based on interests or military strategy, sometimes with Egypt, sometimes with Assyria. The people of Israel no longer place their trust in God. Isaiah calls them to conversion, calm, and serenity. Thus silence has a role connected with faith in God. Setting aside agitation and subterfuges, we must throw ourselves silently into God’s arms. Man’s hope and strength lie in his silent wager on God. But the people in ancient times did not listen to Isaiah. They put their trust in the Egyptian chariots, horses, and military power so as to flee to Egypt. This was raving madness that led to chaos. Instead, the chosen people ought to have commended their lives into the hands of God alone and remained in silence. Our future is in God’s hands and not in the noisy agitation of human negotiations, even if they may appear useful. Even today, our pastoral strategies without any demands, without an appeal to conversion, without a radical return to God, are paths that lead nowhere. They are politically correct games that cannot lead us to the crucified God, our true Liberator.

  Modern man is capable of all sorts of noise, all sorts of wars, and so many solemn false statements, in an infernal chaos, because he has excluded God from his life, from his battles, and from his gargantuan ambition to transform the world for his selfish benefit alone.

  35. Those who are unknown and remain silent are the real men. I am certain that great men rarely resort to facile speeches. They mark out a path by the eloquence of their silences and the austerity of their life, which is inseparably connected with the “mind of Jesus Christ”. Likewise, it is magnificent to be noted for one’s silence.

  At the dawn of this new millennium, the silent ones are the persons most useful to society, because—creatures of silence and interiority—they live out the authentic dimension of man. The human soul does not express itself by words alone.

  36. In our consumer society, man incessantly struts like a peacock but takes no ca
re of his soul. He displays a façade and splendid clothes that wear out and are good for the moths.

  37. Without underestimating the work of the missionaries and the merit of their sacrifices, we can say that the monks and nuns are the greatest spiritual force in the Church. Contemplatives are the greatest evangelizing and missionary force, the most important and most precious organ that transmits life and maintains the essential energy throughout the body. God chooses persons to whom he entrusts the mission of dedicating their life to prayer, adoration, penance, suffering, and daily sacrifices, accepted on behalf of their brethren for the glory of God, so as to fill up in their flesh what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for his Body, which is the Church. These persons are creatures of silence. They are constantly in the presence of God. Night and day they sing the praises of his name, for the Church and for humanity. We do not hear them because they contemplate the Invisible and carry on the work of God.

  38. The men and women who pray in silence, in the night, and in solitude are the supporting pillars of Christ’s Church. In these confused times, contemplatives are the ones who really spend themselves in the generous offering of their lives for an existence that is more faithful to the promises of the Son of God. The true missionary, Saint John Paul II used to say, is the contemplative in action.

  39. Since his resignation, Benedict XVI has been like a monk, withdrawn in the silence of a monastery in the Vatican gardens. Like contemplatives, he is at the service of the Church by dedicating his final efforts, and the love of his heart, to prayer, contemplation, and adoration of God. The Pope Emeritus stands before the Lord for the salvation of souls and for the glory of God alone.

  40. And yet, for two millennia, what a surprising paradox it has been to see so many garrulous theologians, so many noisy popes, so many successors of the Apostles who are pretentious and infatuated with their own arguments. But the Church is unshakable, set firmly on Peter “the Rock” and the rock of Golgotha.