Once again, be silent! Let no one notice what you are about. You are working for the Invisible One; let your work be invisible.
Way of the Ascetics: The Ancient Tradition of Discipline and Inner Growth
Tito Colliander
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At the beginning it takes an effort in order to be quiet, but if we are faithful, little by little, something is born of our silence that attracts us to more silence.
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“Many of us feel remorse for our sins, yet we gladly accept their causes.”
—St. Mark the Ascetic -
“Involuntary thoughts arise from previous sin; voluntary ones from our free will. Thus the latter are the cause of the former.”
—St. Mark the Ascetic -
It is necessary, however, to acknowledge that silence is difficult. It scares us. It gives us a greater awareness of our helplessness and awakens a certain fear of our isolation in the presence of the invisible God. Silence awakens the anxiety of confronting the bare realities that are at the bottom of our soul. Our interior temple is often so ugly that we prefer to live on the outside of ourselves in order to hide in worldly vices and noises. But the moments of silence lead infallibly to profound decisions, wordless decisions, a gift of my inmost “self”. Conversions take place silently and not in spectacular gestures. Returning to God, burying oneself in him, this total gift, these moments of intimacy with God are always mysterious and secret. They involve an absolute silence, a formidable discretion. I think that it is really necessary to practice silence.
The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise
Cardinal Robert Sarah, Nicolas Diat -
The uneasiness of silence does not come from the silence itself but about what it reveals. A retreatant comes to a charterhouse in order to encounter God, and he begins by encountering an unexpected person: himself. The surprise is not particularly pleasant.
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When a candidate comes to make a retreat with us, many memories rise again to the surface. They have been in him for a long time, covered up by the noises of life. When the commotion stops, he can no longer escape, and he understands that the silence and solitude of the cell that he perceived as a place of rest are also a place of trial where he will have to face the most difficult combat: the battle with himself.
The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise
Cardinal Robert Sarah, Nicolas Diat -
“Try to unlearn officiousness and curiosity; for they can spoil solitude as nothing else can.”
—St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent -
If the Lord delays granting you full victory over your enemies and puts it off to the last day of your life, you must know that He does this for your own good; so long as you do not retreat or cease to struggle wholeheartedly. Even if you are wounded in battle, do not lay down your arms and turn to flight. Keep only one thing in your mind and intention—to fight with all courage and ardour, since it is unavoidable. No man can escape this warfare, either in life or in death. And he who does not fight to overcome his passions and his enemies will inevitably be taken prisoner, either here or yonder, and delivered to death.
Unseen Warfare
Lorenzo Scupoli -
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it.”
—Seneca, Great Ideas On the Shortness of Life
SO GOOD QUOTES 