Note: The spiritual discipline of silence – practiced to greater or lesser degrees – is of biblical origin and has been enjoined by “all writers on the spiritual life.” One wonders, then, why it seems such an odd, foreign, and difficult practice today. It casts the character of noise in a sad and sinful light, or at least emphasizes how detrimental to spiritual growth noise is. The older I’ve gotten, the more of a fan of silence I’ve become. And here’s something I’ve learned: it really is easy to create an envelope of silence to live in (don’t turn on the radio or start the video; stand aside from the pointless nattering chit-chat where people gather; seek out quieter places); what is really hard is dealing with the constant running commentary in one’s own head.

Quote:

“All writers on the spiritual life uniformly recommend, nay, command under penalty of total failure, the practice of silence. And yet, despite this there is perhaps no rule for spiritual advancement more inveighed against, by those who have not even mastered its rudiments, than that of silence. Even under the old Dispensation its value was known, taught, and practised. Holy Scripture warns us of the perils of the tongue, as “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21). Nor is this advice less insisted on in the New Testament; witness: “If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man” (St. James 3:2 sq.). The same doctrine is inculcated in innumerable other places of the inspired writings.

“Silence may be viewed from a threefold standpoint:

• As an aid to the practice of good, for we keep silence with man, in order the better to speak with God, because an unguarded tongue dissipates the soul, rendering the mind almost, if not quite, incapable of prayer. The mere abstaining from speech, without this purpose, would be that “idle silence” which St. Ambrose so strongly condemns.
• As a preventative of evil. Seneca, quoted by Thomas à Kempis complains that “As often as I have been amongst men, I have returned less a man” (Imitation, Book I, c. 20).
• The practice of silence involves much self-denial and restraint, and is therefore a wholesome penance, and as such is needed by all.

“From the foregoing it will be readily understood why all founders of religious orders and congregations, even those devoted to the service of the poor, the infirm, the ignorant, and other external works, have insisted on this, more or less severely according to the nature of their occupations, as one of the essential rules of their institutes.”

Source: Obrecht, Edmond. “Silence.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 13. New York: Robert Appleton Company,1912.