GOD

IS
SILEN
CE
The Infinite Way Study & Meditation Centre, Cape Town
Contact 083-749-8516

PIERRE LACOUT

Many Friends who heard Pierre Lacout speak on What

worship means to me at the Conference of European and Near
East Friends held at Birmingham in July 1969 expressed interest in
his Dieu est Silence. The Friends Home Service Committee, in
response to many requests, is glad to publish this first edition in
English.

Pierre Lacout
Pierre Lacout was born in 1923 at Rodez in the south of France.
Attracted at an early age by the mystic life, he entered at the
conclusion of his studies into the Carmelite order, where he began
his initiation into the search for God at the school of Saint Theresa
of Avila and St. John of the Cross.
He prepared himself for the priesthood at Rome and in his own
religious diocese in the south of France, where later he was to
teach theology. There in the Carmelite desert of Requebrunesur-Argens he discovered the deep meaning of solitary
contemplation.
A course of psychoanalysis at the International Institute of
Psychology and Psychotherapy at Geneva led him to rethink his
vocation and his faith. It was in this process that he moved
gradually from Catholicism to Quakerism. Both the silence of the
Carmelites and the silence practised in the Religious Society of
Friends are a seeking for God in simplicity, humility and love. His
search therefore could continue and broaden out towards a religion
without frontiers.
Pierre Lacout has been a member of Switzerland Yearly
Meeting since May 1964, and is in the Lausanne group of Friends.
He is married and teaches French Literature at the College Pierre
Viret.
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Contents
1 God is silence
2 Give us this day our daily silence
3 Preparation for silence
4 The psychology of silence
5 Obstacles to silence
6 The art of making use of obstacles
7 The stages of silence
8 The silence of Jesus
9 Silence and pacifism

1 GOD IS
SILENCE
The most simple reality, God, is the one which men have
striven hardest to complicate. It has become the battle-ground of
terrible conflicts, the cause of fratricidal wars. God, through the
fault of man, has ceased to be a bond which unites and has become
a flag to be raised on fields of battle.
God is dead we hear today. This conclusion was inevitable
after so many years of sectarianism. If He is really dead, dead in
the hearts and minds of men, it is because He has been crushed
under the weight of indigestible abstractions and interminable
discussions.
To avoid adding new errors to the old ones, let us give the name
Silence to what others prefer to call The Word.
Speech tends to divide men, who cling to words rather than
to their meaning. Words give rise to dogmas claiming to be
comforting certainties. Words give rise to religions, to churches
which break up the great family of simple souls, for whom
loving worship should be enough, into rival sovereign
fragments.
Words split apart, Silence unites. Words scatter, Silence
gathers together. Words stir up, Silence brings peace. Words
engender denial; Silence invites even the denier to find fresh
hope in the confident expectation of a mystery which can be
accomplished within him.

In my active silence, I shall prepare myself to hear the Silence

of God.
But when you pray, go into a room by yourself, shut the door,
and pray to your Father who is there in the secret place; and
your Father, who sees what is secret, will reward you.
Matthew, vi, 6.
In this way, I find beyond the words the meaning which gives
them life, the eternal Gospel which is revealed at every moment
of history, to every soul irrespective of race, tradition or
condition. Equality becomes a reality in the silence of reverent
waiting. Privilege is done away with. If any one is privileged it is
the one who is most humble and most receptive.
Deep silence is the very condition for religious experience. In
this deep silence there comes a Silence deeper still which is
religious experience in its purest form. I want to express this
experience and so I seek for the right words. And the richest words
I find are the simplest, the most silent ones: Presence, Inner Light,
Love, Life. Yet I am still aware how much silence is to be preferred
to words.
If nevertheless I speak, it is to communicate with souls
whose silence is in unison with mine and who hear the Silence
of God in the words I use. If I speak again it is to awaken to this
silence souls ready to receive it. But I am convinced that neither
the written nor the spoken word will ever be as precious as Silence.
For, in the soul dwelling in silence, God himself is Silence.

2 GIVE US THIS
DAY OUR
DAILY
SILENCE
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy
kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven; give us
this day our daily silence
Inner silence can and must become a reality at every moment of
our lives. If it is an exceptional condition, it is because we are
living habitually in a state of spiritual unawareness. There are so
many people who, spiritually asleep, allow their lives to be filled
with trivialities. Their minds and hearts are too cluttered for this
Inner Light to shine clearly.
No wealth is more bounteously bestowed than this Inner Light
and there is none that we are less aware of. How many of us are
ready to dig deeply to find this hidden treasure? How many are
ready to sell all they have to possess it?
The Kingdom of Heaven is like treasure lying buried in a
field. The man who found it buried it again; and for sheer joy
went and sold everything he had and bought that field.
Matthew, xiii, 44
To live as though the treasure of the Inner Light were not within
us is to live as though it did not exist at all.

Here is another picture of the Kingdom of Heaven.

A merchant looking out for fine pearls found one of very
special value; so he went and sold everything he had, and
bought it.
Matthew, xiii, 45.
On the threshold of the life of silence we must be ready to stake
everything. This is why beginners are afraid, why they hesitate;
and why so many give up the search.
It is impossible to be spiritually aware, without cultivating this
awareness. We must make up our minds, clearly and deliberately,
to set aside every day a certain period of time for this life. We must
not be surprised to meet difficulties in the search for this inward
silence if we are under-nourished people making do, through
idleness, with the weekly Meeting for Worship sometimes not
even that. It is for each one of us to ask himself what he wants, and
then to want it with all his heart.
Regular practice is important. The Spirit blows where it will but
it only fills sails already spread. Athletes know from experience the
value of training. They practise every day to improve their form.
Are we to suppose that only our spiritual form can thrive on
neglect or wishful thinking? Even though we do not have to
embark on our spiritual training with the idea of reaching
championship standards, we must nevertheless realise that only by
giving of our best can we expect to achieve the best results.
Daily silence experienced in humility and fervour as an
indispensable exercise in spiritual nourishment gradually creates
within us a permanent state of silence. The soul discovers in such a
silence unsuspected possibilities. It realises that life can be lived at
different levels. The fusion of action and contemplation so
difficult to achieve and yet so fruitful stems precisely from this
possibility of living simultaneously at several different levels.
The silence of religious experience is never a silence in which
the soul shuts itself up in isolation. It is a silence which opens out
on to the infinite in a true communion of minds and hearts, in real
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unity founded on respect for diversity. The individual silence

practiced every day is an extension of, and at the same time a
preparation for, the corporate silence of the Meeting for Worship. A
soul gathered in silent worship is never alone with God. It is
always in communion with the soul of all other worshippers; its
silence plunges it into that inward light which lightens every man.

3 PREPARATION
FOR SILENCE
Preparation for the practice of silence is essential if one wants to
feel the gentle breeze of the Spirit.
This preparation demands humility of mind and heart, and the
habit of inward retirement. It is silence itself which prepares us
for Silence.
There is a silence even in action. We are reaching this silence
when we look beyond appearances, when we broaden our horizons,
when our words are steeped in the mystery of God. Words must be
the vehicle of silence if we are to be the messengers of God. The
active man is reaching this silence when he loses sight of himself
and sees only the other man and in the other man the One who is
seeking that of Himself in each of us.
We are preparing ourselves for silence not once a week or once
a day but at every moment when the moment is lived in faith,
poverty of spirit, love and hope. That moment is sacred. That
moment is the Presence, the very life of God, the breath of God
breathed through the breath of man, the marriage of the eternal
and the temporal, the incarnation of the Everlasting Word in our
time-broken works, the tragedy of life melting away in the joy of
our self-offering.
How can the man who squanders this moment be ready to live
fully the precious moments of Meeting for Worship when God
alone must be in command? The Spirit awakens us and pardons us.
But, awakened and pardoned though we be, the Spirit counts on
our alert attention.

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When we have realised the full value of silent worship, we are

eager to prepare the way of the Lord, to make straight his
paths. We spread our sails to catch the breath of the Spirit. We
labour to make our own road to God.
As a starting point, we choose beforehand a theme which can
gather together, not disperse, our spiritual forces. This preparation
can be infinitely varied according to individual personality,
character, vocation and religious experience.
It might be a reading. There are passages in which the Spirit is
waiting for us. They will not be the same for each individual. Each
of us should make a personal anthology of those writings which the
touch of the Spirit has sanctified; why not make good use of these
places from which the soul can take flight? Listening to music or
contemplating a work of art, or the creation of something beautiful,
may suit others. Nothing is to be scorned, nothing excluded; hold
on fast to any method that may prove fruitful.
The yearning for God makes us resourceful. He who seeks,
finds. Let us never neglect, as far as we are able, this preparation
for corporate Silence. The prophetic quality of the ministry
depends on it. Words spoken in Meeting can arise from springs
clear or muddied, from the deep waters or from the shallows.
Whether there has been preparation or not, we must not go to
our silent worship paralysed by a feeling of unworthiness. God is
the God of the present moment, writes Meister Eckhart, `Just as
you are he finds you, receives you and takes you; not just as you
were but just as you are at this moment.

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4 THE
PSYCHOLOGY
OF SILENCE
Contemplative silence is a special form of attention. The
better we understand the latter, the better we can practise the
former. Malebranche tells us that attention is a natural prayer by
which we are enabled to be enlightened by Reason. John of the
Cross writes of contemplation that it is loving attention. The
philosopher states that attention is a prayer, the mystic that prayer
in its highest form is attention. Everything is to be gained, in my
opinion, by such a comparison.
Attention is seeing with the eyes of the spirit. It is an inward
attitude. This way of seeing, this attitude, seek to fix themselves on
their object, the better to grasp it, analyse it, be penetrated by it.
Our eyes can be turned towards outward things, towards material
realities, or inwards towards psychic realities ideas or states of
mind. Is not contemplative silence a look turned inwards to the
deep realities of the soul? Silence has this peculiarity that it
seeks an object which is hidden it is a gaze fixed on the
invisible. In the field of our conscious being there must be no
point on which it comes to rest. It is a gaze which cannot and
must not have a final objective.
The man who came permanently to rest in his ideas about God,
however lofty they might be, would be turning away from God:
My thoughts are not your thoughts. The man who greedily
clings on to the sweet savours which may come from God is
turning away from God to nourish himself on his own spiritual
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condition. Lights are not the Light. These fragmentary pleasing

experiences are not the joy and the peace which are above all
satisfaction of the senses. Contemplative silence is a way of
seeing which needs no object. It can only be defined as direction. It
is a looking towards, not a looking at. Ideas about God are good
only if I move quickly on from them. The sweet savours coming
from God are good only if we leap forward from them. We must
always go beyond. The Inner Light is a space without
boundaries.
The difficulty of Silence for beginners is precisely this absence
of object. The beginner needs an object. Before contemplating
he must meditate. Let him take the Gospel or other spiritual
writings and nourish himself on words about God. Let him from
the very beginning practise looking beyond the words. It will not
be long before spiritual understanding begins to, dawn in him and
this will make it possible to distinguish the words which lead into
Silence from those which shine with a false brilliance. The Holy
Scriptures are silent words with the power to lead the soul into
silence. It is by this sign that the friends of Silence recognise them.
Amongst different forms of attention psychologists make a
distinction between the attention they call spontaneous and the
attention they call willed. Spontaneous attention is aroused by the
object itself. The object thrusts itself upon us without any effort on
our part, even at times in spite of us. Attention in this case has, as it
were, a mesmeric effect forcing us to look. Advertising is the art of
subjecting us to this form of violence. The product must in some
way enter into us through our eyes and ears. Advertisers know that
attention is always attention for something, that there must be some
motivation. They strive, therefore, to play on one or other of our
tendencies, our instincts, several even. Some psychologists deny
the name attention to this inferior, often degrading form of it. It is
a conditioning of the mind, not the life of the spirit. True attention
would always be the result of the will: a spiritual state which
requires an effort for its creation.

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The life of silence is always a willed attention. It demands

long effort and always requires consent, the giving of oneself. But
there is a tendency for the self to become mesmerised, possessed
by it.
The fully developed religious life becomes a mystic life. For
some mystic is synonymous with exceptional, involving
visions, transports, levitations. . . . This is putting the important
thing into second place, pushing the central to the periphery.
For Paul, a mystic is a person who knows the fullness of Christ,
who lives by the inflowing of the Holy Spirit:
It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
Galations, ii, 20
They are the sons of God who are guided by His Spirit.
Romans, viii, 14
Paul is a contemplative who lives in the four dimensions of
love. John is not a mystic because he had the visions of the
Apocalypse but because he was born of God because he revealed
that God is Light, Love and Life.
In silence which is active, the Inner Light begins to glow a
tiny spark. For the flame to be kindled and to grow, subtle
argument and the clamour of our emotions must be stilled. It is by
an attention full of love that we enable the Inner Light to blaze and
illuminate our dwelling and to make of our whole being a source
from which this Light may shine out.
By this active silence the soul is prepared for passive silence.
Then God brings the soul into silence. A spontaneous attention but
not in its inferior and degrading form. The soul which is thus
compelled and mystically possessed is liberated and not restricted:
in this way the soul realises its deepest desire. It is an enlarging of
the soul, a widening of the horizon. Psychologists tell us that
attention is an active waiting animated by reason. Silence is an
active waiting animated by faith and love. There comes an answer;
and then it is that the soul is filled by the Presence.
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God is there. But there is still silence. And the more God is
there, the more there is Silence. Only those who try out this way of
silence know how many shades of meaning this word can include,
how much variety, how much mystery. At this point psychology
can go no further.
At the top of the mountain the road stops.
John of the Cross
When we experience this we are in the kingdom of the
ineffable.

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5 OBSTACLES
TO SILENCE
No sooner has our gaze turned inwards towards the deepest
Centre than there begins the tumult of mental images. A horde of
instinctive desires rushes into the field of our consciousness. The
inward gaze vanishes as it were into thin air; the soul seems
somehow to be battered into dust. The temple of Silence has
become a fairground.
The first obstacle to contemplative Silence is distraction This
simple word conceals very complicated states of mind, a whole
series of phenomena. There is, for instance, the return of the
dominating preoccupation of the moment intellectual,
professional or emotional. This is a question of the conscious
material which occupies the mind during the day coming up
without difficulty to the surface. It is difficult to shut the door on
these images with which we have just and for so long been
concerned. The emptiness of our time of preparation is not a
sufficient barrier. The soul has no watertight compartments.
The distracted person as the etymology of the word indicates is
one who is pulled in this direction and that. His mind is, so to
speak, fragmented into trivialities. It is understandable that
absorbing activities into which we are putting perhaps too much of
our heart should return to the attack in the great peace of our
silence. But why at this precious moment, more than at any other,
should we be wholly possessed by trivialities? The insignificance
of the objects which seize hold of our imagination, capture it and
take it prisoner, bewilders the religious soul, and brings humiliation
and discouragement. It is nevertheless a very common, almost inevitable experience. We must be aware of this in order not to fall
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into a mood of sterile self-accusation. We must also give up the

concept of the sovereignty of the will, which is pure myth.
Humility is more powerful than the will.
Another trial, often more grievous, is the experience of the
subconscious. The soul which is satisfied with simple meditation,
with a purely speculative contemplation (for example, enjoying the
taste of ideas, savouring a conceptual vision) or the soul taking a
pleasant sip at spiritual experience, these souls scarcely run any
risk of coming up against the subconscious. But the one who does
not stop on the way, but goes beyond meditation, ideas and the
enjoyment they give, to silence itself; the one who seeks the
deepest Centre, the very heart of being; such a one cannot avoid
meeting in his path the subconscious and its phantoms. At the
moment of silence he comes face to face with all his repressions.
Repression, according to Freud, is not necessarily pathological it
is the essential condition for sublimation. It is the failure to repress
that produces morbidity.
It is perhaps this experience that John of the Cross was trying to
describe in passages where he speaks of the passive night of the
senses, and he had no knowledge of clinical psychology. His
experience as a contemplative made him suspect the existence of
phenomena still unknown and unexplored. The contemplative has a
knowledge of himself and of man which goes very deep and which
has not always been painlessly achieved.
There may be pathological obstacles to silence such as the
inability to concentrate ones loving attention. The contemplative is
never outside the human condition and its misery. The person who
after a period of depression finds his thoughts wandering in all
directions must for the duration of his illness give up the idea of
prolonged silence. Patience in his trial, and deprivation, will take
the place of silence for him. He will be cut off from joy, but not
from the mystic life.

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6 THE ART OF
MAKING USE
OF OBSTACLES
There are numerous obstacles which are impossible to
catalogue; such is their proliferation according to individual
temperament, character, and personality. Much more important
without any doubt is the art of making use of obstacles, as
obstacles. It is a valuable help if we can receive instruction on this
point, if we can find a guide in the person of a friend or the
example of a mystic.
There is no obstacle which, once recognised and understood,
cannot become the starting point for a new leap forward, even that
pathological condition which precludes the exercise of silence.
That is the message of the Crucified One through the Cross to the
Light. If we can pass beyond the conscious, there remain many
opportunities to turn our eyes, however briefly, towards the Inward
Light. It is for souls in affliction that self-offering assumes a
concrete meaning, for sacrifice is not a rite but an attitude of the
whole being, the consecration of ones whole life.
If we wish to make progress in the way of Silence we must be
convinced that the will cannot of itself impose calm and serenity.
The role of the will is a very modest one like that of the shepherd
who chooses where his sheep shall graze; or of the dog who
gathers in the flock and watches over it. Nothing more, but
nevertheless of great importance. Neither the shepherd nor the dog
can prevent one of the sheep from straying. They do not worry
about it their task is to bring back the wanderer to the pasture. A
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silence entirely occupied in a tireless re-assembling of the flock is

an excellent exercise. The Holy Spirit works secretly in the depths.
The soul is unaware of what is happening and cannot rejoice in the
process. But let it persevere; one day it will find itself, without
knowing how, in a wide space within, free and bathed in light. The
painful times of silence in which dog and shepherd accomplished
their hard task have borne their fruit.
In the desire to escape from all distraction there lurks a
dangerous pride: the dream that one can, like some celestial being,
be above the common condition. This is not the spirit of Nazareth,
taught by the carpenters son. Even if the contemplative desired it,
he would be powerless to stop the wanderings of his imagination.
Much more than this he must, against his will, plumb the depths
of his unconscious, suffer what he sees in its treacherous shadows,
and feel the bite of the demons that are perhaps only our
complexes.
This is the experience of the thorn of which the apostle Paul
speaks: If I should choose to boast, it would not be the boast of
a fool, for I should be speaking the truth. But I refrain, because
I should not like anyone to form an estimate of me which goes
beyond the evidence of his own eyes and ears. And so, to keep
me from being unduly elated by the magnificence of such
revelations (Paul had just been speaking of being transported into
the third heaven), I was given a sharp pain in my body which
came as Satans messenger to bruise me; this was to save me
from being unduly elated. Three times I begged the Lord to rid
me of it, but his answer was My grace is all you need; power
comes to, its full strength in weakness. I shall therefore prefer
to find my joy and pride in the very things that are my
weakness; and then the power of Christ will come and rest
upon me.
Corinthians, xii, 6-10.

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Humility and the spirit of poverty are the safest handrails to

hold on to along this path. We must accept ourselves as we are,
seize the passing moment with its glory or its wretchedness, live
with what we are and with what we have, in loving self-giving.
There is, however, one obstacle which can be a real hindrance
because it resists the Light, covering it over with a thick layer of
darkness. This opaque screen is the screen of egotism, of the
puffing-up of self, of possessiveness. There is no silence where
there is no void. There is no illumination where there is no
transparency.

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7 THE STAGES
OF SILENCE
The first stage on the road which leads to the radiant Silence of
the mountain tops is active silence, sought for in the nakedness of
faith. From that moment a soul begins this search, it has already
had some form of religious experience, however obscure. It has
come within the magnetic field of the divine Centre. Pascal,
following Augustine in this, found the words which best express
this starting point:
You would not be seeking me if you had not already found
me.
The soul has found its Centre, and it is to reach this Centre that
it journeys on courageously despite the burdens and the periods of
dryness.
Each stage corresponds to a progress in love. Love unites.
Silence and love go hand in hand. The quality of the one indicates
the quality of the other.
Later come the stages of silence which are the gifts of Gods
Grace and the manifestations of His Nature.
The first of these is the grace of inward retirement. Mystics
compare the faculties of the soul to the sheep which the whistle of
the divine shepherd calls back to the fold. The sheep return of their
own accord at the faintest signal. They say also that the soul is like
the bee which flies swiftly back to the hive; or like the tortoise
which with an instinctive movement withdraws and hides in itself.
The power of the soul, says another, is like the needle which
swings towards the magnet. Such, according to the mystics, is the
grace of inward retirement.
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The second manifestation of God is the grace of inward

quiet, of deep peace, of repose in the Light within. This quiet is
distinguished from retirement by a more deeply felt inward
pervasion. The will feels itself to be held captive. A spring of water
flows with the utmost tranquility and gentleness from the most
secret depths. It is not a question here of consolation bestowed
upon ourselves by the exercise of our faculties, but of joy truly felt
as a favour at the moment we receive it. In this inward quiet the
soul must not be concerned with thinking much, but with loving
much.
The third manifestation of God is the grace of union. All
these divine visitations are in fact unions, the experience of another
Presence, an ever-deepening intimacy. However, spiritual authors
recognise a variety of inward states, differing in their intensity,
their quality, their effects. Hence all these different manifestations
of God. Why should we add to inward retirement and quiet the
grace of union? Because by this grace the soul is more completely
possessed. Its understanding receives particular enlightenment.
Above all, it is dominated more than ever before by a feeling of
certainty. Then God established Himself in the deepest centre
of that soul in such a way, writes Theresa of Avila, that in
returning to itself it is impossible to doubt that it has been in
God and God in it. This is truly a meeting with the living God,
the death of the old Adam, the birth of the new man-forms of
words which now express a solid reality. The contemplative burns
with the intense desire to work for the Kingdom of Love, an active
purposeful desire which makes him ready for any sacrifice.
Finally, there is one last stage, a union even more consummate
and which fulfils the souls deepest longing for unity. This is the
grace of fusion. Many mystics call it spiritual marriage, recalling
The Song of Songs which is its most perfect poetic expression.
This is not just a fleeting grace but a permanent union. In the most
sensitive part of the soul, at its deepest centre, sheltered from all
surface eddies, God and the soul are present to each other. Pauls
words;

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He who links himself with Christ is one with him spiritually

Corinthians, vi, 17.
are the best and simplest expression of a religious life which has
attained this degree of fullness. John, in the fourth gospel, echoing
the last talks and conversations of Jesus with his disciples,
describes magnificently this final stage:
Then you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me,
and I in you.
John, xiv, 20.
And again,
Anyone who loves me will heed what I say; then my Father
will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling
with him.
John, xiv, 23.
We can know this mystery of unity theoretically, from the
outside. Or we can live it. This is the living experience for which
silence prepares us and towards which silence leads us, before it
gives it to us ever more bounteously.
From silence to silence, the small voices of silence as Gandhi
called it. There comes a day when our silence proclaims more
loudly than any words that God is Light, Love and Life.

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8 THE SILENCE
OF JESUS
In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus gives a series of warnings
about the many ways in which the believer can slip into hypocrisy.
All false imitations of the inner life have this in common that they
are an outward manifestation of self-interest. We wish to present a
favourable image of ourselves to the eyes of men. We are not
concerned with God alone.
It is in this context that Jesus gives us his warning against
hypocrisy in prayer:
When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; they love to say
their prayers standing up in the synagogue and at street
corners, for everyone to see them. I tell you this, they have
their reward already.
Matthew, vi, 5.
Here is now the positive advice:
But when you pray, go into a room by yourself, shut the door,
and pray to your Father who is there in the secret place, and
your Father who sees what is secret will reward you.
Matthew, vi, 6.
Prayer is a mystery, a secret between God and the soul, a
movement inwards, a retreat, a self-forgetting. Nothing counts but
the ineffable Presence.

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After the precept, here is the example. Apart from the

seventeenth chapter of John, the Gospels never describe the prayer
of Jesus in any detail. There are restrained references here and
there in the course of the narrative, as inconspicuous as possible.
Only the patient and very attentive reader is allowed to see Jesus at
prayer. Let us try to come upon him at some of his times of prayer.
Jesus is about to depart secretly from Capernaum where he had
been teaching in the Synagogue. In the evening after sunset, he had
healed the sick and liberated those possessed of devils:
Very early next morning he got up and went out. He went
away to a lonely spot and remained there in prayer"
Mark, i, 35
Immediately after the first miracle of the loaves and fishes;
Jesus made the disciples embark and go on ahead to the other
side, while he sent the people away; after doing that, he went
up to the hillside to pray alone. It grew late and he was there
by himself.
Mathew, xi, 23 and Mark, vi, 45-8
He stayed there until the fourth watch of the night, that is about
three o'clock in the morning. He then came walking on the waters
to meet his disciple who were in difficulties because the wind was
against them.
Luke summarises the last days of Jesus before the drama of the
Passion in this way:
His days were given to teaching in the temple, and then he
would spend the night on the hill called Olivet. And in the early
morning the people flocked to listen to him in the temple."
Luke, xxi, 37, 38
It could be said that the external actions of Jesus are completely
enfolded in the inward silence. His life is a magnificent apologia
for silence: for three years (or two according to some) he worked
as a prophet and a healer, labouring to establish the Kingdom of

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God in the world of man and matter. For the thirty preceding years
he kept silence.
How we should love to see into the silent soul of Jesus, to
penetrate the mystery of his solitary communion with God! We can
only guess at them by pondering on the prayers he put into words
for our use the Lords Prayer and the Prayer For Unity. The Lords
Prayer was taught by Jesus to his disciples after a silence as Luke
suggests in chapter eleven.
These are essentially silent words coming from the silence and
leading to silence. All commentaries are poor, wretched,
inadequate. All the words of Jesus, emanating from a silence of
rare depth and fullness, must be heard in the silence of the soul.
Then they reveal he Silence of God.

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9 SILENCE AND
PACIFISM
For two thousand years the Good News has not ceased to ring in
mens ears. For two thousand years violence has increased by leaps
and bounds. Now we have reached the atomic age.
What show have we put on to save humanity from apocalyptic
horrors? Peaceful coexistence? This so-called peaceful
coexistence is nothing but the simple resolve to tolerate the
existence of a different system. The misunderstandings still
persist. Both sides accept the necessity of making minor
concessions but each remains master in his own domain. Might is
more right than ever it was. Peaceful coexistence is merely a
refusal to enter into dialogue.
Just as there is a servile religion founded on the fear of
punishment, so there is a servile peace founded on a balance of
terror. Man is today clever enough to land on the moon, but he
is still too infantile to recognise the existence of the other
person as another person. Man? A creature of overdeveloped
intellect who remains emotionally retarded. We must be
realistic enough to admit this. The other only exists as an other
if I can listen to him when he expresses his otherness. To hear
him we must know how to keep silent. Man is incapable of
listening in to man because he is less and less capable of
listening in to God. Freedom of speech is a sacred right which too
many regimes have denied. But why is it so unfruitful in those
countries where it can still be exercised? Because everybody talks
and nobody listens. Each individual lives, as in a cell, in the narrow
world of the words he utters. Every individual, and every group.
Words are no longer bridges linking the one to the other. Speech
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which is not heard only intensifies isolation and increases the

babble of tongues. The clever ones profit by this. Less and less a
helpful servant and more and more an instrument of propaganda,
speech has become the vehicle for the uneasy consciences of men.
Words must be purified in a redemptive silence if they are to
bear the message of peace. The right to speak is a call to the duty
of listening. Speech has no meaning unless there are attentive
minds and silent hearts. Silence is the welcoming acceptance of
the other. The word, born of silence, must be received in
silence.
How many pacifists are there who proclaim aloud their
convictions? And amongst these how many are silent souls able to
listen to God and to their human brothers? Pacifism is just one
more illusion if it is not, in its silence, a total opening of the self,
a respectful attention to the other, with understanding and
love. Gandhi had learnt to listen to his small silent voice. Martin
Luther King knew the secret of The Strength to Love.
Let Gandhi have the last word in the farm of three quotations
which are worth quite as much as any lengthy exposition:
Prayer is the very essence of religion; it must therefore be
the marrow of mans life, for no man can live without religion.
Prayer is not an asking. It is an aspiration of the soul. It is
a daily confession of our weakness.
It is better to put ones heart into ones prayer without
finding the right words, than to find the right words without
putting ones heart into them.
Young India. 25.11.26, 23.9.26, 23.1.30.

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