Silence

Comments

• jydeacon

  February 2010

  Another day when a council was being held in Scetis,
  the Fathers treated Moses with contempt in order to test
  him, saying, 'Why does this black man come among us?'
  When he heard this he kept silence. When the council was
  dismissed, they said to him, 'Abba, did that not grieve you at
  all? 'He said to them, 'I was grieved, but I kept silence.'
  Anba Moses the Black
  
  Some brothers were coming from Scetis to see Abba
  Anthony. When they were getting into a boat to go there,
  they found an old man who also wanted to go there. The
  brothers did not know him. They sat in the boat, occupied
  by turns with the words of the Fathers, Scripture and their
  manual work. As for the old man, he remained silent. When
  they arrived on shore they found that the old man was going
  to the cell of Abba Anthony too. When they reached the
  place, Anthony said to them, 'You found this old man a good
  companion for the journey?' Then he said to the old man,
  'You have brought many good brethren with you, father.'
  The old man said, 'No doubt they are good, but they do not
  have a door to their house and anyone who wishes can enter
  the stable and loose the donkey.' He meant that the brethren said
  whatever came into their mouths.
  
  Having withdrawn to the solitary life he made the
  same prayer again and he heard a voice saying to him,
  'Arsenius, flee, be silent, pray always, for these are the
  source of sinlessness.'
  
  The calmness of the wilderness leads to the calmness of
  the senses and the heart, as St. John Saba says: “Silence
  your mouth, for your heart to talk, silence your heart for
  God to talk.”
  
  A few selections you may use from sayings of the desert fathers as well as the sublimity of monasticism