17 — INTERIOR SILENCE

Presence of God. — O Lord, silence in me every voice of the world, of creatures, of my ego, so that I may hear only Your voice.

Meditation

1 — Sacred Scripture says: “Where there is much talk, sin will not be lacking. He who is reckless in speech will suffer harm” (Prov. 10, 19; 13, 3). The rule of life of a consecrated soul, even if it lives in the world, must always make room for the practice of silence; and if, because of the demands of the duties of one’s state, it were absolutely impossible to fix determined hours for it, one must hold to this principle: speak as little as possible with creatures, in order to speak as much as possible with God. One must therefore become accustomed to keeping control of one’s words so as to avoid excessive talkativeness, useless chatter, easy prolonged conversations, excessive pouring out of oneself in creatures. As with the use of the senses, so with that of speech the norm applies: use it only in the measure required by duty, by charity; and if it is certainly licit to use it also for just relief, one must always do so with a sense of moderation and within reasonable limits.

But exterior silence is not enough; one must arrive at interior silence, that is, the silence of the interior senses. Make memory, imagination, sensibility, memories, thoughts, and useless forecasts be silent.

“If anyone thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue... his religion is vain” (Jas. 1, 26), which, says St. John of the Cross, must be understood “of the interior tongue no less than the exterior one” (Ct. 9).

2 — To the soul desirous of divine intimacy God Himself says: “Hear, daughter, and see, and incline your ear, and forget your people and your father’s house” (Ps. 44, 10). Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity comments: “To hear [God], one must forget the father’s house, that is, all that has to do with natural life. To forget one’s own people is more difficult because that people is that world which, so to speak, is part of ourselves: sensibility, memories, impressions, the self in a word. One must forget it, leave it; and when the soul has made this rupture, when it is free from all this, the King falls in love with its beauty” (II, 10).

The beauty of the recollected soul is the unity of its spirit, no longer divided and scattered by creatures, but entirely concentrated in God; He then delights in it and often communicates Himself to it, transforming its recollection, that is, its “silence,” making it divine, since “knowledge of God is in divine silence” (J.C. LF I, 26).

This total silence—exterior and interior—thus places the soul in condition to know and listen to God who dwells in it: “The Eternal Father spoke one Word only, namely His Son, and this Word He always speaks in eternal silence, and in silence it must be heard by the soul,” teaches St. John of the Cross (LF II, 21); and Sister Elizabeth of the Trinity exclaims: “O eternal Word, word of my God, I want to spend my life listening to You.” This is the fundamental occupation of the soul that desires to be “a perfect praise of glory” of the Most Holy Trinity: interiorly to live in continual silence so as to listen to and adore God present within it, externally to be and do only what the divine word indicates to it little by little.

Colloquy

My God, teach me the secret of silence that reaches all the way to interior silence.

How many times I have experienced that when I pour myself out in creatures, losing myself in uselessly prolonged conversations, my spirit grows dry, dissipated, emptied; and if then I want to recollect myself in prayer, I am incapable of gathering my interior faculties to fix them on You, incapable of silencing that little world of impressions, chatter, fantasies, useless thoughts that continually brings me back to creatures.

I feel it, O Lord, You want from me greater fidelity to silence, greater care to avoid spreading myself in creatures. Yes, my God, I want to be silent with creatures in order to be able to listen to Your voice that speaks in silence.

“But when I argue with my ego, occupy myself with my sensibility, pursue a useless thought, any desire whatever, I scatter my strengths; my soul is not wholly ordered to You, O God, my lyre does not vibrate in unison and You, O Master, touching it, cannot draw divine harmonies from it. There is still too much that is human, it is a dissonance. If I keep anything still in my interior kingdom, in which all my faculties are not enclosed in You, my God, I cannot be a perfect praise of glory... because unity does not reign in me, and instead of continuing my praise through everything in simplicity, I must at every instant gather the strings of my instrument that are as though scattered everywhere” (E.T. II, 2).

Help me, O Lord, to realize this beautiful interior unity that gathers all my faculties in silence in order to concentrate them in You, that makes the soul attentive to Your every word, capable of perceiving every smallest inspiration and motion of the Holy Spirit.

You, O Lord, from the morning awaken me; You awaken my ears so that I may listen to You as to a master (cf. Is. 50, 4), but Your word is gentle like a whisper, and sounds without sound: therefore a profound silence is needed in order to hear it. O Incarnate Word, who one day by a mere gesture of Your hand made the winds fall silent and the waves of the lake of Gennesaret be calmed, deign to repeat that gesture in my soul and there will be calm, there will be silence.

“O eternal Word, Word of my God, I want to spend my life listening to You, I want to make myself perfectly docile in order to learn everything from You” (E.T. El.).