Inner silence is one of the most invoked themes of the spiritual life — and one of the most distorted. Everyone talks about it: advertising, self-help, meditation apps, "well-being" retreats. And precisely because it is everywhere, the word has been emptied of its proper meaning. It is confused with simply falling silent, with "emptying the mind", with an anti-stress pause, with stopping thoughts, with inaction or flight from the world — when it is not, conversely, suspected of being a dubious Eastern import or a Quietist daydream.
Yet inner silence, in the sense of the Christian tradition, is neither a void nor a technique: it is a fullness. The Catechism speaks of prayer as "listening to the Word of God"[1], and defines it, at its summit, with a word that says everything:
"Prayer is silence, this 'symbol of the world to come' or 'silent love'." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2717[2]
Everything is there: Christian silence is not absence — absence of noise, absence of thought, absence of self — but a presence; not a hollow, but a "love" grown so simple that it no longer needs words. It is the silence of two who love each other and have nothing left to prove. The imagery of "mental emptiness" and "disconnection" has almost entirely covered over this reality.
This article reviews the most frequent misunderstandings about inner silence, grouped according to whether they concern its nature, its practice, or its source and end. For each, it states the error in its common form, shows why it appeals, why it is false, then recalls what the Church truly teaches, with citations to support it.
This is neither an anthology nor a practical guide: for the saints' own voices — Desert Fathers, Carmel and Carthusians — on silence, see What the Saints Say About Inner Silence; for the detailed nature of silence, its degrees, its enemies (dissipation, the noise within) and concrete means of growth, see How to Grow in Inner Silence; and for God's own silence — dryness, the dark night, the sense that He is silent — see Why Does God Seem Silent?. Here, as in the twin article Common Errors Concerning Fortitude, we clear the ground: we first learn to recognize counterfeit coins in order to better receive true gold.
Why Is Inner Silence So Misunderstood?
A word reduced to the mere silence of the lips
The first confusion is the most natural: inner silence is mistaken for outer silence, the silence of the heart for that of the mouth. Falling silent would mean no longer speaking, switching off the music, isolating oneself from noise. Silence is then filed among material conditions — a quiet room, headphones, a peaceful hour — and one believes it has been reached as soon as nothing is heard anymore.
But the silence of the lips is only a means, while inner silence is an end of a wholly different order. One can fall silent and seethe within; one can be alone in a mute room and conduct a din of thoughts, resentments, plans and images there. Conversely, some keep a peaceful, recollected heart amid tumult. The silence the tradition seeks is not primarily acoustic: it is the silence of the heart, the calming of passions and scattered thoughts that makes the soul capable of listening. Outer silence favours it but does not give it: it is the door, not the room. Confusing the two means stopping on the threshold while believing one has entered — the whole distinction between means and end is developed in How to Grow in Inner Silence.
A notion captured by the "well-being" fashion
A second source of misunderstanding, more contemporary: for twenty years, silence and "meditation" have become a product. They are sold as mental hygiene, a remedy for stress, a tool of performance and "mindfulness". Spiritual vocabulary — interiority, presence, letting go, full presence — has been massively reused by a well-being market that kept the words and lost the object. There, silence serves to recentre oneself, to recharge oneself, to feel better: it remains turned toward the self.
Yet Christian silence is exactly the opposite of withdrawal into oneself. Cardinal Robert Sarah made this diagnosis the heart of his great book on the "dictatorship of noise": without silence, God disappears into noise, and this noise becomes all the more obsessive because God is absent[3].
Silence is not a parenthesis of calm between two activities; it is the space where God can finally be heard. Postmodern man, Sarah writes again, can no longer bear God's silence; deprived of noise, he sinks into a dull agitation[4], and ends up preferring noise, which occupies him, to silence, which would confront him with God and with himself. The silence of the "well-being" fashion soothes symptoms; Christian silence heals the cause, by reopening the soul to a Presence. As long as silence is seen only as inner comfort, its essence has been missed.
Errors About the Nature of Inner Silence
"Inner silence means emptying the mind"
This is the most widespread error, and the most consequential: falling silent would mean "emptying the mind", voiding the spirit of all content, reaching a vacuity where there would be nothing left — no thought, no image, no object. The expression is everywhere, and it rests on a sound intuition: to listen, one must indeed silence the hubbub. The error also appeals because it echoes Eastern methods of meditation, widely spread in the West, where the goal is precisely the dissolution of the self into an undifferentiated void.
But Christian silence is not a vacuity: it is an inhabited expectation. The nuance is so important that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith devoted an entire letter to it, Orationis formas (1989). Christian prayer, it recalls, "is always determined by the structure of the Christian faith": it is "a personal, intimate and profound dialogue between man and God", and as such it "flees impersonal techniques or concentration on oneself, which can create a kind of rut, imprisoning the one who prays in a spiritual intimism"[5]. Christian silence does not empty the soul in order to empty it: it silences it so that Another may speak. Saint Augustine, quoted by the same document, said it in a word: the emptiness God asks for is not renunciation of created things, but "renunciation of selfishness"; "do not remain within yourself, but go beyond yourself, for you are not God"[6]. Eastern silence seeks to lose itself in the indistinct; Christian silence seeks to find itself by giving itself to Someone. The first is a void; the second, a fullness — a "silent love"[7], which no longer needs words because it is wholly presence to the Beloved.
"It means having no more thoughts, stopping the mind"
An interiorized variant of the previous one, and the most discouraging in practice: inner silence would be the stopping of thoughts. One would have succeeded when the mind falls silent, when no idea crosses it anymore; and the least distraction — a returning worry, an image, a tune going round — would mark failure. Many give up prayer for this reason alone: "I cannot do it, I am constantly distracted." The error appeals because it gives a simple, measurable criterion: zero thoughts.
But the total stopping of thoughts is neither possible nor asked for. The human mind is made for thinking; reducing it to absolute silence is not a virtue, it is a fantasy — or a technique. The Catechism is liberatingly realistic on this point:
"The habitual difficulty in prayer is distraction. […] To chase distraction away is to fall into its trap, whereas it suffices to return to our heart." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2729[8]
Distraction is therefore not the enemy of silence: it is the ordinary matter of the combat. Inner silence does not consist in having nothing left in one's head, but in returning — gently, indefinitely — to the One being listened to, each time one has drifted away. The Catechism adds that distraction "reveals to us what we are attached to", and that this humble awareness can itself become prayer[9]. Silence is not the absence of thoughts: it is the orientation of the heart, maintained through thoughts. On the patient combat against thoughts and the degrees of silence (of the lips, the senses, the imagination, the heart), see How to Grow in Inner Silence.
"It is a relaxation technique, a method to be mastered"
An error of the present time: inner silence would be a technique — a method of breathing, posture, concentration, which one need only learn and repeat to obtain a state of calm at will. One speaks of "doing" one's meditation as one does one's sports session, with its steps, its timers and its measurable results. The error appeals because it is effective at its own level: these techniques genuinely relax, and our age loves what can be controlled.
But Christian silence is not a know-how to be mastered: it is a relationship to be received. The same Roman letter settles it plainly: "the love of God, the sole object of Christian contemplation, is a reality which cannot be 'taken possession of' by any method or technique"[10]. One can dispose body and soul, arrange outer silence, set noises aside — all this is wise and the Church recommends it. But inner silence itself, as encounter, is always a gift: it comes when God gives it, and our part is to consent to it, not to manufacture it. Reducing silence to a technique means treating God as an object to be reached rather than as a Person to be welcomed — and missing what technique can never produce: the gratuity of a presence. On the art of falling silent "out of love, not by strained effort", see How to Grow in Inner Silence.
Errors About the Practice of Inner Silence
"Inner silence requires the cloister and perfect solitude"
An error of reduction, and a grand alibi: silence would be reserved for monks, contemplatives, those who live far from the world. For the hurried city-dweller, the overwhelmed parent, the worker amid noise, it would be out of reach — a cloistered luxury. One admires the Carthusians from afar, and believes oneself dispensed: "silence is not for me, not in my life." The error appeals because it is convenient: it relegates silence to a place one will never go.
Yet while prolonged outer silence is indeed the privilege of a few, inner silence is offered to all, everywhere. Madeleine Delbrêl, who lived her contemplation in the heart of a working-class, militant suburb, said it bluntly:
"We do not lack silence, for we have it. The day we lack it is the day we have not known how to take it. All the noises around us make far less racket than we ourselves do. True noise is the echo that things have within us." — Madeleine Delbrêl[11]
The supreme model is not a hermit, but a family: at Nazareth, Mary and Joseph lived thirty years of ordinary, laborious, hidden life, which tradition calls a "lesson in silence"[12]. Saint Catherine of Siena, overwhelmed with works and journeys, taught how to carry within oneself an "inner cell" from which one never goes out, even in full activity[13]. And Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity, in Carmel but speaking to all, pointed to the only enclosure that matters:
"Remain in me… not for a few moments, a few hours that must pass, but 'remain' in a permanent, habitual way." — Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity[14]
Inner silence is therefore not a matter of walls, but of heart: it is carried in the underground as in the desert. On how to inhabit it in an active life, see How to Grow in Inner Silence.
"Falling silent means doing nothing: passivity, inaction, flight"
A very modern error, heavy with suspicion: silence would be a resignation — doing nothing, withdrawing, fleeing responsibilities and the suffering of the world while others act. In an age that measures a man's worth by his activity, silent prayer passes for wasted time, even for disguised selfishness. The error appeals because it flatters productivist obviousness: what produces nothing visible is worth nothing.
But Christian silence is not inaction: it is a hidden fruitfulness. Far from sterile, it is the source from which true action springs. Saint Teresa of Calcutta, of whom no one will say she fled the world, made it the condition of her service:
"The more we receive in silent prayer, the more we can give in our active life." — Saint Teresa of Calcutta[15]
Silence does not remove one from the world: it makes one capable of truly loving it, instead of agitating about it. The Carthusian who falls silent carries the world in his prayer; the mother who prays in silence loves her own better. There remains, it is true, a false silence which does deserve the reproach of inaction: the muteness of hardness, the withdrawal of wounded pride, the flight of one who falls silent in order not to love. But that silence is not inner silence; it is its counterfeit — a silence empty of charity. True silence is recognized by its fruits: it makes one gentler, more available, more present to others, never more closed. The distinction between fruitful silence and false silence is treated in What the Saints Say About Inner Silence.
"If I am distracted or feel nothing, it has failed"
An error of the generous beginner, and a great cause of discouragement: the quality of one's silence would be judged by what one feels. If prayer unfolded in peace and sweetness, it would have "succeeded"; if it dragged through dryness, boredom and distraction, it would have "failed". One ends up measuring one's spiritual life by the temperature of one's feelings. The error appeals because feeling is immediate, palpable, and because at the beginning God often gives sensible consolations that help one pray.
But feeling is not the measure of silence — it can even be its trap. The Catechism places dryness not among failures, but among the normal trials of those who pray sincerely:
"Another difficulty, especially for those who sincerely want to pray, is dryness… the heart is weaned, without taste for thoughts, memories and feelings, even spiritual ones." — Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2731[16]
Dryness, far from being a sign of abandonment, is "the moment of pure faith": one then prays no longer for consolation, but for God alone. An arid prayer, crossed by distractions, but in which one remained out of fidelity, is often worth more than a delightful prayer in which one rested in one's own sensations. Inner silence is not measured by the pleasure taken in it, but by the fidelity with which one keeps to it. This is developed in detail in Why Does God Seem Silent?, which shows why God weans the soul from consolations in order to purify its love.
"Silence means switching off one's emotions, a flat calm"
An affective variant of the "vacuity" error: inner silence would be an anaesthesia — the extinction of emotions, an even calm, an absence of turmoil resembling the Stoic sage's impassibility. The silent man would feel nothing anymore; he would have switched off sorrow, desire, revolt, as one turns down the sound. The error appeals because it confuses peace with flatness, and silence with the absence of inner life.
But Christian silence does not switch off the heart: it unifies it and turns it toward God, emotions included. The Bible itself, in the silence of prayer, gives words to crying, lament, burning desire: the psalms groan, plead, exult, without ceasing to be prayer. Silence is not the absence of feeling, but the calming that prevents feeling from carrying everything away. "Be still! Know that I am God"[17]: this "be still" does not abolish the soul, it settles it. Mary's silence is not indifference; it is a contained intensity, a loving rumination:
"Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart." — Gospel according to Saint Luke 2:19[18]
There is true silence: not an extinguished heart, but a heart that keeps, weighs and loves beneath the Word. A soul that felt nothing anymore would not be silent, it would be dead. Inner silence is full — full of attention, full of desire, full of a love grown peaceful.
Errors About the Source and End of Inner Silence
"Silence is manufactured by willpower and technique alone"
An error of strong-willed natures: inner silence would be obtained by effort — enough discipline, enough concentration, enough mastery, and calm would be forced to come. One then tenses up to silence one's thoughts, fights against oneself, exhausts oneself "succeeding" at recollection. The error appeals because it is generous and contains a share of truth: silence does require ascetical combat, guard of the senses, fidelity.
But strained effort produces the opposite of what it seeks. The more one tenses up not to think, the more one thinks; the more one hunts calm, the more one agitates oneself. For deep silence is not a conquest but a welcome: it is the work of grace in a soul that has humbly done what depended on it, then lets itself be wrought. Ambrose of Lombez says it in his own way: God "speaks only the language of peace, which can only be heard by those who enjoy peace in their own hearts"[19] — and this peace is not given to oneself by force, it is received by ceasing to fight. The saints' silence is not a performance of will; it is "let yourself be wrought, let yourself be loved"[20]. Wanting to manufacture silence by oneself alone is still noise: the noise of effort covering the voice one claims to listen to.
"Silence is an end in itself: seeking the experience"
A subtle error, and the most spiritual in appearance: silence would be sought for silence's sake — for the well-being it procures, the savoured peace, the feeling of depth, the inner "experience". Silence then becomes a state to be reached, a pleasure to be reproduced, almost a sweet drug of the soul. The error appeals because it dresses in the colours of devotion: one believes one seeks God when in reality one seeks the consolation God gives.
Saint John of the Cross named this bent with a harsh word: spiritual gluttony. Beginners, he writes, "make their end" of the savour and sensible taste they find in God's things, and cling to it like children led by sensuality rather than by reason[21]. End and means are then confused: silence is not the goal, it is the path; and the goal is not an experience, but Someone. The end of silence is love — union with God and, through Him, with others. A silence cultivated for the quality of its sensations turns back on itself and becomes a refinement of self-love. True silence is "silent love"[22]: it does not watch itself savouring, it looks at God. That is why God, in His pedagogy, sometimes removes savour (dryness) precisely to detach the soul from the pleasure of silence and attach it to Himself alone — a point developed in Why Does God Seem Silent?.
"Inner silence is suspect, vaguely Eastern or Quietist"
An error opposite to all the previous ones, and frequent among sincere, prudent Catholics: silence, contemplation, wordless prayer would be suspect — an open door to Buddhist emptiness, pantheism, illuminism, or that old heresy which is Quietism. Better, it is said, to keep to vocal prayers, devotions, action, and to distrust anything resembling an inner "ascent". The error appeals because it rests on a real danger and a real condemnation by the Church.
The danger is real, and must be named. The Quietism of Miguel de Molinos — his Spiritual Guide — was condemned by Pope Innocent XI in the bull Coelestis Pastor (20 November 1687), which reproved sixty-eight propositions[23]. What the Church condemned is not silence or contemplation, but a caricature: an absolute passivity in which the soul, "annihilated", would have nothing left to do — neither resist temptations, nor posit acts of virtue, nor even desire its own salvation — to the point of holding devotions, meditation on Christ's Humanity and every deliberate act as imperfections. False Quietist silence is a resignation of freedom and love; it has nothing in common with the saints' silence, which is the opposite: a supreme attention, an activity of love at its peak, a burning listening.
For inner silence is not a foreign import: it lies at the very heart of Revelation. It is in "the sound of a gentle whisper", not in the hurricane, that God reveals Himself to Elijah[24]. It is "in secret" behind a closed door that Christ commands us to pray to the Father:
"But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father who is present in secret." — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 6:6[25]
And it is the Catechism itself — not an Eastern manual — that defines prayer as a "silence" and a "silent love"[26]. The whole Catholic tradition, from the Desert Fathers to Carmel and the Carthusians, cultivated this silence without ever falling into emptiness or passivity: their silence is "fullness of a soul stretched toward God"[27], active listening to the Word, "obedience of faith"[28]. The criterion distinguishing true from false is simple: Christian silence makes one more loving, freer, more active in charity; false silence — Eastern or Quietist — extinguishes love, freedom and action. Depriving oneself of inner silence for fear of error means throwing away gold with counterfeit coin, and abandoning to today's gurus a treasure that is first of all Catholic.
Error and Truth, at a Glance
The table below sums up the misunderstandings covered: on the left, the error in its common wording; in the middle, what makes it false; on the right, what the Church truly teaches, with its source. It reads line by line, like a quick antidote to received ideas.
| Common error | Why it is false | What the Church teaches |
|---|---|---|
| Inner silence means the absence of noise | Confuses the silence of the lips (means) with the silence of the heart (end) | "True noise is the echo that things have within us" (M. Delbrêl)[29] |
| Falling silent means "emptying the mind" | Christian silence is not vacuity but an inhabited expectation | Prayer = "personal dialogue" turned toward a "Thou", not withdrawal into self (CDF, Orationis formas, n. 3)[30] |
| It means having no more thoughts | Totally stopping thoughts is impossible and is not asked for | "To chase distraction away is to fall into its trap… it suffices to return to our heart" (CCC § 2729)[31] |
| It is a relaxation technique to be mastered | Silence is a relationship received, not a know-how | God's love "cannot be taken possession of by any method or technique" (CDF, n. 31)[32] |
| Silence requires the cloister | Inner silence is lived everywhere, even in full activity | Nazareth, "lesson in silence" (CCC § 533)[33]; the "inner cell" (Catherine of Siena)[34] |
| Falling silent means doing nothing | Silence is a fruitfulness, not inaction | "The more we receive in silent prayer, the more we can give" (Teresa of Calcutta)[35] |
| If I am distracted or arid, it has failed | Feeling is not the measure; dryness is normal | Dryness, a trial "of those who sincerely want to pray" (CCC § 2731)[36] |
| Silence means switching off emotions | Silence unifies the heart, it does not anaesthetize it | "Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart" (Lk 2:19)[37] |
| Silence is manufactured by willpower alone | Strained effort makes noise; deep silence is welcome | "Let yourself be wrought, let yourself be loved" (Fr. Vayssière)[38]; God "speaks only the language of peace" (Lombez)[39] |
| Silence is an end in itself (the experience) | Seeking the savour of silence = spiritual gluttony | Making one's end of sensible taste is an imperfection (John of the Cross, Dark Night I, 6)[40] |
| Silence is suspect, Eastern or Quietist | The Church condemns false passive silence, not contemplation | Quietism condemned (Coelestis Pastor, 1687)[41]; yet prayer is "silence… silent love" (CCC § 2717)[42] |
True Silence, in a Word
At the end of this journey, true inner silence can be defined by contrast with all that it is not. It is not the absence of noise, but the presence of a listening heart; not emptiness, but fullness; not the stopping of thoughts, but their orientation; not a technique, but a received relationship; not a cloistered privilege, but a cell carried everywhere; not inaction, but fruitfulness; not anaesthesia, but unification of the heart; not a manufacture of the will, but a welcome of grace; not an experience to be savoured, but a love turned toward God; not a suspect daydream, but the very heart of the Catholic tradition. In one word of the Catechism: a "silent love"[43]. Everything else — the counterfeit coins this article has reviewed — are only its forgeries.
For Further Reading
- What the Saints Say About Inner Silence — the anthology: Desert Fathers, Carmel, Carthusians, Sarah, Mother Teresa, the saints' own voices on silence.
- How to Grow in Inner Silence — the practical guide: nature, degrees of silence, enemies (dissipation, noise within), concrete means, fruits.
- Why Does God Seem Silent? — God's silence: dryness, dark night, Deus absconditus, how to hold on when one feels nothing.
- Common Errors Concerning Fortitude — the twin article, same method applied to the virtue of fortitude.
Notes and References
Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2716: prayer is "listening to the Word of God"; this listening, far from passive, is "the obedience of faith" and requires the attention of the heart. Official French edition, Mame/Plon, 1992.
1 28Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2717: "Prayer is silence, this 'symbol of the world to come' (Saint Isaac of Nineveh) or 'silent love' (Saint John of the Cross)." Official French edition, Mame/Plon, 1992.
2 7 22 26 42 43Cardinal Robert Sarah (with Nicolas Diat), The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise, Ignatius Press, 2017, p. 80: "Without silence, God disappears in the noise. And this noise becomes all the more obsessive because God is absent." French edition (La Force du silence, Fayard, 2016).
3Cardinal Robert Sarah (with Nicolas Diat), The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise, Ignatius Press, 2017: deprived of noise, postmodern man sinks into a dull agitation, accustomed to a permanent background noise that oppresses as much as it reassures (paraphrase; page unverified). French edition, Fayard, 2016.
4Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation (Orationis formas), 15 October 1989, n. 3: Christian prayer "is always determined by the structure of the Christian faith"; it is "a personal, intimate and profound dialogue between man and God" and "flees impersonal techniques or concentration on oneself, which can create a kind of rut, imprisoning the one who prays in a spiritual intimism" (text on vatican.va).
5 30CDF, Orationis formas, n. 19, quoting Saint Augustine: "The emptiness God needs is that of renunciation of personal selfishness, not necessarily that of renunciation of the created things He has given us. […] Do not remain within yourself, but go beyond yourself, for you are not God." (vatican.va). The passage contrasts the Christian "emptiness" — renunciation of self to go toward God — with the impersonal emptiness of Eastern techniques.
6Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2729, official French translation (Mame/Plon, 1992; Latin reference text on vatican.va): "The habitual difficulty in prayer is distraction. […] To chase distraction away is to fall into its trap, whereas it suffices to return to our heart: a distraction reveals to us what we are attached to, and this humble awareness before the Lord should awaken our preferential love for Him."
8 9 31CDF, Orationis formas, n. 31: "The love of God, the sole object of Christian contemplation, is a reality which cannot be 'taken possession of' by any method or technique." (vatican.va).
10 32Madeleine Delbrêl (1904-1964), The Dazzled by God, New City, 2019, p. 21: "We do not lack silence, for we have it. The day we lack it is the day we have not known how to take it. All the noises around us make far less racket than we ourselves do. True noise is the echo that things have within us."
11 29Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 533, on Nazareth's hidden life as a "lesson in silence"; cf. Paul VI, address at Nazareth, 5 January 1964: "The silence of Nazareth teaches us recollection, interiority, readiness to listen to good inspirations… return to the heart." Official French edition of the CCC, Mame/Plon, 1992.
12 33Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), recurring image in her Letters (notably the Letter to Alessa) and in The Dialogue: the "inner cell" of self-knowledge in God, which the soul always carries with it and never has to leave, even amid action. She speaks of "two cells in one": the material cell and the inner cell of the heart. Reference edition: Letters, Cerf edition.
13 34Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity (1880-1906), Complete Works, Cerf, 1979-1980, p. 100: "Remain in me, not for a few moments, a few hours that must pass, but 'remain…' in a permanent, habitual way. Remain in me, pray in me, adore in me, love in me, suffer in me, work, act in me."
14Saint Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997), God Is the Friend of Silence: "The more we receive in silent prayer, the more we can give in our active life." Mother Teresa loved to repeat that "God is the friend of silence" and that "trees, flowers, grass grow in silence". Phrases taken up in No Greater Love, Bayard edition.
15 35Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 2731: "Another difficulty, especially for those who sincerely want to pray, is dryness. It belongs to prayer where the heart is weaned, without taste for thoughts, memories and feelings, even spiritual ones." It is the moment of pure faith, holding to God without consolation. Mame/Plon edition, 1992.
16 36Psalm 46 (45):11, official liturgical translation (AELF): "Be still! Know that I am God." An invitation to stillness as the condition for knowing God.
17Gospel according to Saint Luke 2:19 (cf. 2:51), official liturgical translation (AELF): "Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart." Mary's silence is a loving rumination of the Word.
18 37Ambrose of Lombez (1708-1778), Treatise on Inner Peace, reissued Traditions Monastiques, 2017, p. 35: "If you want to converse with God, you must be at peace, since He speaks only the language of peace, which can only be heard by those who enjoy peace in their own hearts."
19 39Father Marie-Étienne Vayssière (1864-1940), Consenting to Love: Selected Letters, Béatitudes, 2018, p. 29: "Solitude, silence, recollection: settle yourselves in this atmosphere, keep it jealously. There God speaks and visits us. […] Let yourself be wrought, let yourself be loved — that is the essential."
20 38Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591), The Dark Night, Book I, ch. 6 (On Spiritual Gluttony): beginners, because of the savour they find in their spiritual exercises, "make their end" of this taste and sensible consolation rather than of purity of love; they resemble children led "not by reason, but by pleasure". Reference edition: Complete Works, trans. of Carmel, ICS; Spanish text Noche oscura, Book I, ch. VI.
21 40Innocent XI, bull Coelestis Pastor, 20 November 1687, condemning sixty-eight propositions of the Quietism of Miguel de Molinos (Spiritual Guide, 1675); propositions taken up in Denzinger-Hünermann nos. 2201-2269. Errors condemned: the absolute passivity of the "annihilated" soul, the abandonment of every deliberate act, contempt for devotions and meditation on Christ's Humanity, indifference to one's own salvation. There the Church condemns a caricature of contemplation, not silence or prayer themselves.
23 41First Book of Kings 19:11-13, official liturgical translation (AELF): after the hurricane, the earthquake and the fire — where "the Lord was not" — comes "the sound of a gentle whisper" (Hebrew qol demamah daqqah, literally "a voice of fine silence"). There God reveals Himself to Elijah.
24Gospel according to Saint Matthew 6:6, official liturgical translation (AELF): "But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father who is present in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will repay you." The "secret" (Greek tameion, the closed storeroom of the house) also figures the inner sanctuary of the heart.
25Dom Augustin Guillerand (1877-1945), Carthusian, Carthusian Voice and Spiritual Writings, Parole et Silence, 2001: Carthusian silence is neither emptiness nor muteness, but the fullness of a soul stretched toward God in solitude. The Order's motto, "Stat crux dum volvitur orbis", expresses the stability of the Cross amid a turning world.
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