SILENCE: an energy which extends beyond the furthest reaches of the universe — and never vanishes, a quiet which pervades every particle of this world, and glides through the blackness of the great harbor by night, and speaks differently by day. Speech is the body of silence: the word floats up from silence; it flows back into silence. The word of relationship and the quiet of the heart are inseparable — like love and the silence from which it is born, and the rest to which it returns, unceasingly.
The act of love plunges us into God, who is given in silence. Anything else would run the risk of detracting from the gift. "Silence is the speech of God", according to St. John of the Cross. This act of love frees us from ourselves. In this love, God is revealed in a silence that strips us and makes us experience that "blessed are the poor". Silence preserves us from illusion and gives us security ... The grace of contemplation places the soul in a kind of immobility and silence, which we cannot do of ourselves. God does all this by way of love, which involves a death of the mind and a resurrection of the heart.