THE POWER OF SILENCE - Notes - PART A6 - A HEART THAT LISTENS

 I purchased The Power of Silence by Robert Cardinal Sarah back in 2017. Even after eight years, its pages - filled with profound wisdom - still wait to be fully read and understood.

I am not sure I will ever truly finish the book, let alone grasp the depth of each insight it offers.

Still, I hope that by taking notes and organizing them thoughtfully, I might begin to better comprehend and absorb the treasures it contains.

I am sharing these notes here, and I hope that the gems noted down may bless you as much as they continue to bless me.

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THE POWER OF SILENCE - NOTES

PART A - SILENCE VERSUS THE WORLD'S NOISE

(A6) A HEART THAT LISTENS

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The sentiments that emerge from a silent heart are expressed in harmony and silence.

Silence is man's greatest freedom.

No dictatorship, no war, no barbarism can take this divine treasure away from him.

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Although silence may be the absence of speech, it is above all the attitude of someone who listens.

To listen is to welcome the other into one's heart.

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Soloman asks in Kings 3:9 "Give me, Lord, a heart that listens."

He asks God to make him a silent man, a true child of God. 

He wants neither riches nor glory nor victory over the enemy, but a heart that listens. 

 

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In a contrary movement, the modern world transforms the person who listens into an inferior human being.  

Modernity exalts the man who is drunk with images and noisy slogans, while killing the interior man.

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St James said "The man who holds his tongue controls his life." 

Conversely, the man who talks too much is a ship adrift.  

The unhealthy tendency to externalise all the treasure of the soul by display9ing them in season and out of season is supremely harmful to the spiritual life.

It sets out in the direction opposite to that of the spiritual life, which ceaselessly becomes more interior and deeper so as to draw near to God.

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St Ignatius says in his Epistle to the Ephesians,

It is better to keep silence and be something than to talk and be nothing.

He who has made the words of Jesus truly his own is able to also to hear His silence. 

Thus he will be perfect:  he will act through his speech and be understood through his silence. 

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