If we carry too little silence... Madeleine Delbrêl

"Whoever hears my word"

It is because the Word became flesh that we cannot know him without listening to him. But we can know him even less if we do not try to love him as we listen and try to imitate him with our flesh here where we are living his life; and try to follow his Word where it wants to lead us. And his Word wants to lead us into the depths of the alliance between ourselves and God to where the union of our own will with that of God becomes possible, to where it becomes possible for our acts to be his.

If we carry too little silence, too little recollection, to hold this new form of fruit or to enable us to come to touch the secret of the world, we cannot be alive with the mystery of this alliance. And every form of love on earth is merely an image of this great alliance.

It seems impossible to me to imagine a life lived in accordance with the Gospel that does not include both wanting a life of silence and knowing that such a life is essential.

If we pick out from the beginning of the Gospel to the end all the statements Jesus makes about the "Word" of God - all that he says about the conditions needed for it to be "received" and "listened to"; for it to be "kept," for it to be "done," for it to be "announced"; - we will quickly realize that for the "good news" to be known, lived and communicated it must be welcomed, recollected, and carried in the depth of our being.

And if our whole lives have to be made subject to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, if we desire to make all his words as far as possible our guide in the circumstances of our life, this will only be possible if we make creating silence an integral part of our life.

- Madeleine Delbrêl, The Joy of Believing - from the Magnificat