Monastic Silence

God still speaks. It is not true that he only spoke thousands of years ago and that all we can do is repeat what we think he said then. The truth is that God communicates with us all the time, but we have forgotten how to listen. Every moment, every situation, every circumstance is used by God to communicate with us, but we are deaf. Our confusion within and the continual noise without both conspire to separate us from Him who speaks. If we wish to listen to God we must seek purity of heart within by living the Beatitudes and seek silence in our environment without. When both our interior and exterior are quiet, God will do the rest. This is the monastic quest: this is what is meant by "seeking God". If, towards the end of our quest, we arrive at passive contemplation, when we come to know by our own experience that God is the Agent and we are recipients, then, in the words of Augustine Baker, we will have discovered the presence of God in the heart, his continual activity within us that is beyond words and can only be known in silence.