A Modern Exile

Many persons seek community because they are afraid of loneliness. Because they can no longer endure being alone, such people are driven to seek the company of others/ Christians, too, who cannot cope on their own, and who in their own lives have had some bad experiences, hope to experience help with this in the company of other people. More often than not, they are disappointed. They then blame the community for what is really their own fault. The Christian community is not a spiritual sanatorium. Those who take refuge in community while fleeing from themselves are misusing it to indulge in empty talk and distraction, no matter how spiritual this idle talk and distraction may appear. In reality they are not seeking community at all, but only a thrill that will allow them to forget their isolation for a short time. It is precisely such misuse of community that creates the deadly isolation of human beings. Such attempts to find healing result in the undermining of speech and all genuine experience and, finally, resignation and spiritual death.

-from Life Together 81-82

In the end, silence means nothing other than waiting for God’s Word and coming from God’s Word with a blessing. But everybody knows this is something that needs to be learned in these days when idle talk has gained the upper hand. Real silence, real stillness, really holding one’s tongue, comes only as the sober consequence of spiritual silence. This silence before the Word, however, will have an impact on the whole day. If we have learned to be silent before the Word, we will also learn to manage our silence and our speech during the day. Silence can be forbidden, self-satisfied, haughty, or insulting. From this it follows that silence in itself can never be the issue. The silence of the Christian is listening silence, humble stillness that may be broken at any time for the sake of humility. It is silence in conjunction with the Word. This is what Thomas a Kempis meant when he said: “No one speaks more confidently than the one who gladly remains silent.” There is a wonderful power in being silent-the power of clarification, purification, and focus on what is essential. This is true even when considered from a purely profane point of view. But silence before the Word leads to proper hearing and thus also to proper speaking of God’s Word at the right time. Much that is unnecessary remains unsaid. But what is essential and helpful can be said in a few words.

-from Life Together 85

The more we learn to allow the other to speak the Word to us, to accept humbly and gratefully even severe reproaches and admonitions, the more free and to the point we ourselves will be in speaking. One who because of sensitivity and vanity rejects the serious words of another Christian cannot speak the truth in humility to others. Such a person is afraid of being rejected and feeling hurt by another’s words. Sensitive, irritable people will always become flatterers, and very soon they will come to despise and slander other Christians in their community. But humble people will cling to both truth and love. They will stick to the Word of God and let it lead them to others in their community/ They can help others through the Word because they seek nothing for themselves and have no fears for themselves.

-From Life Together 105