A Door on the Mouth, A Window to the Heart

The labor of guarding the tongue and the birth of compunction

“By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.”

— Matthew 12:37

Synopsis of Tonight's Group on The Evergetinos Volume II - Hypothesis XLVII E-I

As we come to the end of this hypothesis, the Fathers leave us with something painfully ordinary. They do not give us visions of heaven or heights of contemplation. They speak about the tongue. About when to speak. About when to remain silent. About lowering the eyes. About saying only what is necessary. It feels almost too simple. Yet they place it before us as a matter of life and death.

They tell us that God is always watching.

Not watching in suspicion, but watching as One who longs to dwell within us. And yet how quickly the door of the mouth is thrown open and everything inside spills out. Opinions. Explanations. Justifications. Pious thoughts. Clever remarks. Even good words spoken at the wrong time. We imagine that because something is true or orthodox or well intentioned it must be spoken. But the Fathers are ruthless here. They tell us that even good speech can disperse the soul.

Saint Diadochus says that when the doors of the baths are left open, the heat escapes. So too with the soul. We labor for years to gather the mind, to kindle even a small flame of prayer, and then in a few careless conversations it dissipates. We leave a gathering inwardly empty. Not because we sinned gravely, but because we spoke much.

The tragedy is not only that we lose recollection. It is that we begin to live outwardly. We become performers of thoughts. We interrupt. We insert ourselves. We fear being unnoticed. Saint Maximos unmasks this disease with precision. He says the one who interrupts reveals his love of glory. How often do we speak not from charity but from hunger. Hunger to be seen. To be affirmed. To be needed. Even in spiritual settings. Especially there.

Isaiah the Anchorite brings it to the ground level. If you must speak, do so quietly. With humility. With reverence. As one ignorant. As one unworthy. Lower the face. Say little. Return quickly to silence. This is not theatrical piety. It is an interior stance. The tongue restrained becomes a sign that the passions are not ruling the heart.

The Gerontikon cuts even deeper. Abba Joseph says he cannot control his tongue. The elder asks him one question. Do you find peace when you talk. No. Then why talk.

There is something almost brutal in that simplicity. We speak and we lose peace. Yet we keep speaking.

Abba Sisoes, a great ascetic, confesses that for thirty years he has prayed to be delivered from sins of the tongue and still he falls daily. This should sober us. If such a man trembles over his speech, what of us who speak constantly and without fear.

And yet the Fathers do not romanticize silence. Abba Isaac exposes the counterfeit. There is a silence born of pride, of wanting the glory of being perceived as spiritual. A brooding silence that hides malice. A calculated silence that manipulates. This is not holiness. This is ego dressed in restraint. True silence either springs from zeal for virtue or from inward conversation with God. If it is not one of these, it will decay into self admiration.

The stakes are high. If you guard your tongue, Isaac says, God will give you compunction. Compunction. The gift of seeing your own soul. The light of the mind. The joy of the Spirit. Silence becomes not emptiness but revelation. But if the tongue conquers you, you will never escape darkness.

We are accustomed to thinking that sanctification comes through great works. Through ministries. Through projects. Through visible sacrifices. The Fathers insist that it may begin with something as small and humiliating as closing the mouth.

Not as repression. Not as fear. But as reverence.

To speak only when there is good reason. To speak because it is God’s will and not because it soothes our anxiety. To listen more than we talk. To accept being unknown. To resist the need to untie every thought that wanders into the stable of the mind.

This teaching must be internalized or it will remain quaint desert wisdom. It must confront us in the car after a conversation that left us agitated. It must confront us before we send the message, before we correct someone, before we offer unsolicited counsel, before we share a clever insight. It must question us. Is this necessary. Is this born of love. Will this preserve peace. Or am I simply opening the door and letting the heat escape.

All things must be touched by grace. Speech can console, heal, illumine, and reconcile. Speech can also scatter, inflame, and darken. The same tongue that blesses can wound. The same mouth that proclaims Christ can betray Him.

If we do not yet have a pure heart, the Fathers say, at least have a pure mouth.

It is a beginning. A humiliating beginning. A door set firmly in place.

And behind that door, if we are faithful, the slow birth of compunction.