“Be careful not to indulge in a
great deal of talk, for ... sin will not be wanting where there is much
talk” – Carmelite Rule of St. Albert.
Talk about a tall order from the Carmelite Rule! When people come together for any purpose, however noble, a great deal is lost due to the poverty of speech. The Carmelites know this, and frankly we know it, too.
Because of God's richness and his perfect simplicity, he can afford to speak in perfect silence. But we on the other hand are relegated to communicating any truth we encounter with speech. In submitting to the physicality of speaking, we naturally lose something in the descent from the lands of the Spirit to the hard, fleshy earth. Even something as base as our emotions get misrepresented in the attempt to qualify our interior climate. What's even worse, speech enables us to think that we understand what we generally do not. Especially in terms of God and his movement in our lives and in the lives of others.
“Carried away toward the outside by a need to say everything , the talkative person is far from God and from all profound activity,” Cardinal Robert Sarah writes in his book The Power of Silence against the Dictatorship of Noise. “His life is spent entirely on his lips and spills out in floods of words that carry off the increasingly meagre fruits of his thought and of his soul.”
St. Thomas Aquinas famously threw up his arms at the end of his impressive life's work: “It's all straw,” he exclaimed. In a moment, he saw the futility of the massive tome he'd written. In his major work, the Summa Theologiae, St. Thomas made the effort to understand the person of God in hopes to make him just a little more accessible for those who seek him by the light of their reason.
One can hope that after St. Thomas
had calmed down a bit, he was able to have a bit of mercy on himself
and to see his efforts for what they (likely) were: an act of piety
or perhaps more accurately an act of love.
The same is the
case for us. When we witness a friend labouring over a problem, the
temptation is to jump in and come to the rescue with a long list of
should-dos we've gleaned from our own self-help revelations. The
desire is to help, yes, but in truth we may be doing precisely the
opposite.
This is where we need to channel our inner Carmelite. Less is more. Say something short if you are absolutely compelled, but, for the most part, minds and hearts are not changed with long chats into the night. Chats are great for connecting and building community, but people do not solve spiritual problems: God does. With the passing of time and with direction from spiritual people.
If we are humble enough, we will recognize that we risk prolonging the already-arduous path that our friend must walk while limping. Speak if provoked in prayer, but not to fill silence or to offer platitudes.
Advice-giving should always be treated with the utmost
reverence. It should not take place in the form of social media
polling or “venting” with a group of girlfriends. It should be
approached in the way that one approaches God: with humility and
praise of him from whom all life flows.
If your example is
what it should be, your kind countenance and your silence is enough
to provoke some soul-searching and (please Lord) some earnest prayer
on the part of your friend. If you're feeling extra brave, maybe a
quick prayer on the spot together for light and peace in the time of
turmoil and discernment. Keep those pearls in your pocket for another
day.
“The man who holds his tongue controls his life, as
the sailor directs the ship.” Cardinal Sarah writes. “Conversely,
the man who talks too much is a ship adrift. Indeed, garrulousness,
that unhealthy tendency to externalize all the treasures of the soul
by displaying them in season and out of season, is supremely harmful
to the spiritual life. It sets out in the direction opposite to that
of the spiritual life, which ceaselessly becomes more interior and
deeper so as to draw near to God.”