Silence Produces Strength

Therefore, the Lord God, the holy one of Israel, says: In return and rest you will be saved; quietness and trust will be your strength—but you refused. Isaiah 30:15

Silence does not exist in our lives for its own sake. It is ordered to something else. Silence is the
mother of speech. A lifetime of silence is ordered to an ultimate declaration, which can be put into
words, declaration of all we have lived for.

Life and death, words and silence, are given us because of Christ….In Him we die to illusion and
live the truth. We speak to confess Him, and we are silent in order to meditate on Him and enter
deeper into His silence, which is at once the silence of death and of eternal life – the silence of
Good Friday night and the peace of Easter morning.

We receive Christ’s silence into our hearts when we first speak from our heart the word of faith.
We work out our salvation in silence and in hope. Silence is the strength of our interior life. Silence
enters into the very core of our moral being, so that if we have no silence we have no morality.
Silence enters mysteriously into the composition of all the virtues, and silence preserves them from
corruption.

If we fill our lives with silence, then we live in hope, and Christ lives in us and gives our virtues
much substance. Then when the time comes, we confess Him openly before men, and our
confession has much meaning because it is rooted in deep silence. It awakens the silence of Christ
in the hearts of those who hear us, so that they themselves fall silent and begin to wonder and to
listen. For they have begun to discover their true selves.

Try to think:
• We, men and women of the third millennium, bang with the rumors of the world: mass
media, internet, social network, tv etc…, do we still have time to listen to the voice of God
inside us?
• During the course of the day, are we still capable to leave a space for ourselves and let
Christ enter into our hearts?

13 January 2013