October 15, 2017
"I am certain that silence is a divine liberation that unifies man and places him at the center of himself, in the depths of God's mysteries. In silence, man is absorbed by the divine and the world's movements no longer have any hold on his soul. In silence, we set out from God and we arrive at God."
- Robert Cardinal Sarah -
October 8, 2017
"As for interior silence, it can be achieved by the absence of memories, plans, interior speech, worries.... Still more important, thanks to an act of the will, it can result from the absence of disordered affections or excessive desires. The Fathers of the Church assign an eminent place to silence in the ascetical life."
- Robert Cardinal Sarah -
September 29, 2017
"In the presence of God, in silence, we become meek and humble of heart. God's meekness and humility penetrate us, and we enter into a real conversation with him. Humility is a condition and a result of silence. Silence needs meekness and humility, and it also opens for us the way to these two qualities. The humblest, meekest, and most silent of all beings is God. Silence is the only means by which to enter into this great mystery of God."
- Robert Cardinal Sarah -
September 28, 2017
“The present state of the world, the whole of life, is diseased.
If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I would reply:
‘Create silence! Bring men to silence.
The Word of God cannot be heard in the noisy world of today.
Create silence.'”
- Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) -
September 26, 2017
"Solitude and silence are guests of the soul. The soul that possesses them carries them with it everywhere. The one that lacks them finds them nowhere."
- Dom Augustin Guillerand, O Carth. (1877-1945) -
September 25, 2017
"There are external situations that should promote interior silence. It is necessary to provide ourselves with the means of the best possible environment for finding within us the silence that allows us to be in intimate communion with God. Christ very clearly recommends this search for intimacy: 'When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to the Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you' (Mt 6:6). But our real room is precisely ourselves. Man is invited to enter into himself so as to remain alone with God."
- Robert Cardinal Sarah -
September 17, 2017
"The silence of everyday life is an indispensable condition for living with others. Without the capacity for silence, man is incapable of hearing, loving, and understanding the people around him. Charity is born of silence. It proceeds from a silent heart that is able to hear, to listen, and to welcome. Silence is a condition for otherness and a necessity if one is to understand himself. Without silence, there is neither rest nor serenity nor interior life. Silence is friendship and love, interior harmony and peace. Silence and peace have one and the same heartbeat."
- Robert Cardinal Sarah -
August 29, 2017
"Silence leads man beyond words, to the mystery, to worship in spirit and in truth. Silence is a form of mystagogy.
"Silence veils the mysteries, not to hide them, but to reveal them."
- Robert Cardinal Sarah -
August 27, 2017
"What men possess in themselves, they find nowhere else. Unless silence dwells in man, and unless solitude is a state in which he allows himself to be shaped, the creature is deprived of God. There is no place on earth where God is more present than in the human heart. This heart truly is God's abode, the temple of silence."
-Dom Augustin Guillerand, O.Cart. (1877-1945) -
To such profound truths expressed above by men of distinction, this lowly blogger would like to add his trivial thoughts:
Holy silence is not merely an absence of sound and a period of stillness that can be observed. Holy silence is an active yet ineffable engagement between the essence of one's entire soul with the veritable presence of the Blessed Mother and the Holy Trinity.
The abandonment of every worldly care and concern is a prerequisite to this engagement. This means setting aside one's entire self, every possession, every burden and concentrating on the maternal protection of the Blessed Mother, on the compassion of the wounded Christ and on the pardoning of sins, on the fullness of the Holy Spirit entering through an opening created by the relinquishment of one’s own will and on the eternal love of the Father that dwells within the Body of Christ, sacrificed and resurrected in the Holy Eucharist.
During this engagement, a grown man regresses to being the young boy he once was, dependent, innocent, carefree and rises to a space somewhere between Heaven and earth. This elevated dimension is not Heaven but a taste of Heaven. No man on earth can possibly comprehend and absorb what Heaven is, a lasting and infinite magnification of the momentary morsel of complete peace and fulfillment that can be had when one engages one’s entire soul with the veritable presence of the Blessed Mother and the Holy Trinity in holy silence.
Man would choose to remain on this plane of existence notwithstanding its ephemeral nature (not that he could) than to return to his world. One would have to be under the power of Lucifer to disbelieve in such a place or to want to leave it.
[1] https://www.cosjmonastery.com/preclarus/
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