The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise

by Robert Sarah

Silence is not an absence. On the contrary, it is the manifestation of a presence, the most intense of all presences.

What is the correct understanding of exterior silence? “God is the friend of silence. See how nature—trees, flowers, grass—grows in silence; see the stars, the moon, and the sun, how they move in silence”, Saint Teresa of Calcutta said poetically [in her book A Gift for God].

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.

Man must make a choice: God or nothing, silence or noise.

And he concludes: “In silence, sadness is looking at oneself; joy is looking at God. This is why we have silence: it is necessary to get out of oneself, to think of God instead of thinking about self.”

There are souls who claim solitude so as to find themselves, and others who seek it in order to give themselves to God and to others.

122. Let us not hesitate to give pride of place to silent daily prayer in the solitude of our room. In a perfect symbiosis with the cloisters of monasteries, it is necessary to experience an intimate relationship with God in the sanctuary of our room and to fight the good fight of faith through prayer and silence. Today, in this pagan world besotted with idols that boasts of the most abominable sins, God himself demands through the mouth of the prophet Isaiah that we go into our rooms to keep ourselves safe from all contamination and all slavery of sin, but especially to pray intensely with a view to our conversion: “Come, my people, enter your chambers, and shut your doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while. . . . For behold, the Lord is coming forth out of his place to punish the inhabitants of the earth. . . . Or let them lay hold of my protection, let them make peace with me, let them make peace with me” (Is 26:20-21; 27:5). We can become true contemplatives by living in peace with God if our houses become temples of God.

“Militia est vita hominis super terram.” (Man’s life on earth is a combat.)