Silence Is Better

An apt quote before school begins…

… study must first of all leave room for worship, prayer, direct meditation on the things of God.  Study is itself a divine office, an indirect divine office;  it seeks out and honors the traces of the Creator, or His images, according as it investigates nature or humanity; but it must make way at the right moment for direct intercourse with Him.  If we forget to do this, not only do we neglect a great duty, but the image of God in creation comes between us and Him, and His traces only serve to lead us far from Him to whom they bear witness.

    Study carried to such a point that we give up prayer and recollection, that we cease to read Holy Scripture, and the words of the saints and of great souls–study carried to the point of forgetting ourselves entirely, and of concentrating on the objects of study so that we neglect the Divine Dweller within us, is an abuse and a fool’s game.  To suppose that it will further our progress and enrich our production is to say that the stream will flow better if its spring is dried up.

   The order of the mind must correspond to the order of things.  In the world of reality, everything rises toward the divine, everything depends on it, because everything springs from it.  In the effigy of the real within us, we can note the same dependence, unless we have turned topsy-turvy the true relations of things.

– A. G. Sertillanges