A Break from Blogging
A long break, probably. Thank you for visiting my blog.
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When the door of the steam baths is continually left open, the heat inside rapidly escapes through it; likewise the soul, in its desire to say many things, dissipates its remembrance of God through the door of speech, even though everything it says may be good. Thereafter the intellect, though lacking appropriate ideas, pours out a welter of confused thoughts to anyone it meets, as it no longer has the Holy Spirit to keep its understanding free from fantasy. Ideas of value always shun verbosity, being foreign to confusion and fantasy. Timely silence, then, is precious, for it is nothing less than the mother of the wisest thoughts.
- St. Diadochos of Photki, On Spiritual Knowledge
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Holy God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, take from us all that keeps us from You. Have mercy on us and on the whole world.
Labels: Philokalia
2 Comments:
Doesn't fervor pour the more abundantly into speech the more immediate the experience behind it? And doesn't that immediacy remain greatest the less one stops to think? That is true, at least for the moment. But it is also true that the person who talks constantly grows empty, and his emptiness is not only momentary. Feelings that are always promptly poured out in words are soon exhausted. The heart incapable of storing anything, of withdrawing into itself, cannot thrive. Like a field that must constantly produce, it is soon impoverished.
- Romano Guardini, Meditations Before Mass, Ch. 2
A closed mind and know-it-allness are fundamentally forms of resistance to the truth of real things; both reveal the incapacity of the subject to practice that silence which is the absolute prerequisite to all perception of reality.
[Josef Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues, p. 16]
There can be false and crooked ways leading even to right goals. The meaning of the virtue of prudence, however, is primarily this: that not only the end of human action but also the means for its realization shall be in keeping with the truth of real things. This in turn necessitates that the egocentric "interests" of man be silenced in order that he may perceive the truth of real things, and so that reality itself may guide him to the proper means for realizing his goal. On the other hand, the meaning, or rather the folly, of cunning consists in this: that the loquacious and therefore unhearing bias of the "tactician" (only he who is silent can hear) obstructs the path of realization, blocks it off from the truth of real things. "Nor should a good end be pursued by means that are false and counterfeit but by such as are true," says Thomas. Here there comes to light the affinity of prudence and of the clear-eyed virtue of magnanimity. Insidiousness, guile, craft, and concupiscence are the refuge of small-minded and small-souled persons.
[Ibid., p. 20]
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