Silence and Simplicity

The following is an excerpt from the Marian Press book 52 Weeks with St. Faustina by Donna-Marie Cooper O’Boyle:

“Silent lips are pure gold and bear witness to holiness within.”
Diary, 552

This week’s spiritual exercise focuses on the need for silence and simplicity in our lives. We might think they are impossible to find and achieve, but silence and simplicity are necessary for spiritual survival, as St. Faustina shows us so well. In addition, we might struggle with temptations to voice our personal opinion at all costs and not listen very well to the opinions of others. Let’s take a look!

We need silence to pray. The Catechism speaks of the silence necessary for contemplative prayer: “Contemplative prayer is silence, the ‘symbol of the world to come’ or ‘silent love.’ Words in this kind of prayer are not speeches; they are like kindling that feeds the fire of love. In this silence, unbearable to the ‘outer’ man, the Father speaks to us His incarnate Word, who suffered, died, and rose; in this silence the Spirit of adoption enables us to share in the prayer of Jesus” (CCC, 2717, emphasis in original).

Sister Faustina wrote, “[I]n order to hear the voice of God, one has to have silence in one’s soul and to keep silence; not a gloomy silence but an interior silence; that is to say, recollection in God” (Diary, 118). Unless you are living the life of a hermit, you might not have ample opportunities to rest your heart and soul in a bit of silence so as to refresh your batteries and to listen to the Holy Spirit speaking to you. Our fast-paced lives seem to be getting more hurried by the day. Many people lament that they lack the time to properly carve out quiet intervals to spend with the Lord. That is tragic, actually. We cannot exist in a spiritually healthy way if we are not communicating with our Creator. Eventually, that lack of communication with God will wreak havoc on our whole person, not merely our spiritual lives. We must not wait. We need to correct the lack of quiet in our lives now by putting a concrete plan into practice to make it happen. Immerse yourself into as many quiet moments and oases of serenity as possible in which you can better communicate with your Savior. Form those invaluable prayer habits! When it seems impossible to retreat to silence, due to your hectic schedule and your environment, do your best to silence your mind and give your full attention to Jesus — even for a moment. He’ll be there waiting.

“Silent Lips are Pure Gold”

There is another kind of important silence. It is a silence of discretion, of governing one’s tongue. This is necessary for religious and laity alike. Saint Faustina wrote about a number of topics in her Diary that she believed were key spiritual attributes and important rules for her religious congregation. She said that in addition to the vows, there was one specific rule that stood out in her mind as most important. “Truly, if this rule were to be observed strictly, I would not worry about the others.” Since she was dealing with a congregation of women, she pointed out a prevalent problem for women, as well as the opposite traits of the Holy Spirit. “Women are very fond of talking, but the Holy Spirit does not speak to a soul that is distracted and garrulous,” she stated. “He speaks by His quiet inspirations to a soul that is recollected, to a soul that knows how to keep silence” (Diary, 552).

Sister Faustina added. “If silence were strictly observed, there would not be any grumbling, bitterness, slandering, or gossip, and charity would not be tarnished. In a word, many wrongs would not be done. Silent lips are pure gold and bear witness to holiness within” (Diary, 552). Sister Faustina was wise beyond her years. It shouldn’t come as a surprise though, because she was being trained by Jesus Himself! We should take some time to ponder our own lives and the possibility that we may have formed bad habits along the lines St. Faustina describes. But more on that later. I might add that men are equally guilty of gossip and talking too much. Man or woman, we need to curb our tendency to chatter away unnecessarily. The temptation to speak up and answer back when it would be better to remain silent will always poke at us.

Sister Faustina believed, “Silence is a sword in the spiritual struggle. A talkative soul will never attain sanctity. The sword of silence will cut off everything that would like to cling to the soul.” She reminded us, “We are sensitive to words and quickly want to answer back, without taking any regard as to whether it is God’s will that we should speak.” Yet “a silent soul is strong; no adversities will harm it if it perseveres in silence.” Also, “the silent soul is capable of attaining the closest union with God. It lives almost always under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. God works in a silent soul without hindrance” (Diary, 477). Powerful words to ponder.

When to Speak and When to be Quiet

Though Sr. Faustina believed that silence was essential for a soul to be able to grow in holiness, and that keeping silent and not giving into the temptation to talk too much (or even worse, to gossip) was indispensable, she also knew without a doubt that there are times when it is most appropriate to express oneself. Sister Faustina made sure to bring up another important rule for the congregation after writing about silence. She wrote, “Keeping silent when one ought to speak is an imperfection and sometimes even a sin.” Naturally, conversation is sometimes needed in the performance of certain duties. She also pointed out that permission to speak was granted to the sisters twice a day during recreation. “Recreation is an opportunity for getting to know one another. Let each sister speak her mind in all simplicity for the edification of the others and not in a spirit of superiority nor, God forbid, in a quarrelsome manner, for that would not be keeping with perfection and the spirit of our vocation, which should be especially characterized by love.” Sister Faustina completed her explanation on silence for the sisters, saying that if a sister breaks silence when she is supposed to be quiet, she would be punished with public penances by the superior, “or else she will answer for this before the Lord” (Diary, 553).

An elderly priest friend of mine used to suffer from a swollen tongue on occasion because of certain allergies. It flared up suddenly out of the blue. Antihistamines got it under control again. Whenever I tried to console him because of the mysterious malady, he quickly explained that it was “good penance” for him “for sins of the tongue” in his younger days. Sister Faustina once wrote, “I tremble to think that I have to give an account of my tongue. There is life, but there is also death in the tongue.” She explained a particular grave sin of the tongue. “Sometimes we kill with the tongue: we commit real murders. And we are still to regard that as a small thing? I truly do not understand such consciences.” Sister Faustina had a gentle heart and recalled a situation in which an acquaintance was seriously harmed by gossip. “I have known a person who, when she learned from someone that a certain thing was being said about her, fell seriously ill. She lost a good deal of blood and shed many tears, and the outcome was very sad. It was not the sword that did all this, but the tongue,” she explained. “O my silent Jesus, have mercy on us!” (Diary, 119). Will we learn from her teaching? Can we control our tongues? Yes, I believe we can and must.

Silence and Prayer

Silence should be an important part of our prayer lives. Sister Faustina was not the only saint who knew the value of silence. So many of the saints learned the intrinsic value of silence. Mother Teresa was one who spoke a lot about silence and prayer — both to her sisters and to the world. For instance, she said, “We need to find God and God cannot be found in noise and restlessness. We cannot place ourselves directly in God’s presence without imposing upon ourselves interior and exterior silence. That is why we must accustom ourselves to stillness of the soul, of the eyes, of the tongue. There is no life of prayer without silence.” Before throwing in the towel, fearing you cannot possibly achieve this treasured silence in your heart and soul, read a bit further.

Mother Teresa exclaimed, “In the silence of the heart God speaks. If you face God in prayer and silence, God will speak to you. Then you will know that you are nothing. It is only when you realize your nothingness, your emptiness, that God can  ll you with Himself. Souls of prayer are souls of great silence.” Those are powerful words to ponder in our hearts. Mother Teresa recommended finding times of silence to be alone with God. She said, “We too are called to withdraw at certain intervals into deeper silence and aloneness with God, together as a community as well as personally; to be alone with Him — not with our books, thoughts, and memories but completely stripped of everything — to dwell lovingly in His presence, silent, empty, expectant, and motionless.” She continued, “We need silence to be alone with God, to speak to him, to listen to him, to ponder his words deep in our hearts. We need to be alone with God in silence to be renewed and to be transformed. Silence gives us a new outlook on life. In it we are filled with the grace of God himself, which makes us do all things with joy.” This petite saint of the gutters warned of the danger of our prayer lives suffering when we are too chatty. She said, “If we are careful of silence it will be easy to pray. There is so much talk, so much repetition, so much carrying on of tales in words and in writing. Our prayer life suffers so much because our hearts are not silent.”

You can order 52 Weeks with St. Faustina by Donna-Marie Cooper O’Boyle here:

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