Silence is Golden

I also visited St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Exchange Blog today and found another interesting entry. This one dealt with the topic of silence.



The following is an excerpt:

"But, in the midst of the novel, there is solid spiritual advice good for all of us today. It's obvious that Gironella is Catholic. Here is the advice in the confessional that one of the priests in the novel gives the young man, a bank clerk, who is one of the main characters in the book:

I would advise you to do one thing that may seem to you irrelevant: a silence cure. Try it, and tell me how it works out. Manage to go a few days, a couple of weeks, talking as little as possible. Work silently at the bank, study in silence, and economize on words as much as possible. You will see the effects. Almost immediately you will feel a greater serenity. You will find that you pay attention and see things much more clearly. Words distract a great deal, you can't imagine. You come across men who, to hear them talk, you would say were enemies. And basically they are in agreement without knowing it. Others, on the contrary, talk, thinking that they understand one another, and basically, they continue poles apart.

Above all, remember this that I tell you: pay attention. Give your full attention to everything you do, everything you hear. You will discover new worlds. . . . There is no thing or person that cannot teach you something. The same thing is happening to you now that happens to most people: they don't fix their attention. We move like automatons. That is a mistake. There must be reflection. When you hear some new theory, don't say: False! Think that there are thousands who have thought about it before you. But, at the same time, don't say: the Gospel! There is only one gospel: love God and your neighbor.

If you pay attention--and don't think that all these theories are mine--they are St. Augustine's--you will without fail discover something very important: harmony. You will realize that there is harmony in everything, that everything forms part of a harmonious whole. Those very events that at first sight seem startling, you will come to understand as logical, as contributing to something harmonious and great. You will find harmony in the smallest details. This will assist you in no end in ordering your daily life. Your spirit will feel itself strengthened by forming part of that harmonious whole."

Gironella, pp. 415-16 (emphasis added).