Love has given humans very real gifts. The chief one is the divine indwelling, God's own presence within us, sustaining us by this creative action and embracing us, or trying to heal or transform us through the redeeming love that is distinctively motherly. As the spiritual journey progresses, one comes face to face with the divine presence.
Individuals live, as in a cell, in the narrow world of the words they utter -- every individual and every group. Words are no longer bridges linking the one to the other. Speech which is not heard only intensifies isolation and increases the babel 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 uneasy consciences. Words must be purified in a redemptive silence if they are to bear the message of peace ... For, a soul gathered in silent worship is never alone with God. It is always in communion with the soul of all other worshippers; its plunges it into that inward light which lightens every person."