“Exterior silence is an ascetic exercise of self-mastery in the use of speech. …

“Asceticism is a means that helps us to remove from our life anything that weighs it down, in other words, whatever hampers our spiritual life and, therefore, is an obstacle to prayer. Yes, it is indeed in prayer that God communicates his Life to us and manifests his presence in our soul by irrigating it with the streams of his trinitarian love. And prayer is essentially silence. Chattering, the tendency to externalize all the treasures of the soul by expressing them, is supremely harmful to the spiritual life. Carried away toward the exterior by his need to say everything, the chatterer cannot help being far from God, superficial, and incapable of any profound activity.”

Sarah, Robert Cardinal with Nicolas Diat. The Power of Silence Against the Dictatorship of Noise. With an Afterword by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Translated by Michael J. Miller. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017), pages 141-142.