Do Not Flee Silence

The Desert Fathers and Modern Elders on Not Fleeing the Silence

Silence is never neutral. The fathers knew this well. They understood that silence stretches out like a vast inner desert. When one first enters that desert, it feels like abandonment. It feels like being stripped of identity. The ego begins to panic because it has lost the mirrors it uses to reassure itself. The fathers called this first stage the temptation of isolation.

Abba Moses said that when a monk enters silence he discovers “the beasts that dwell within.” Abba Arsenius admitted that when he fled to the desert, he felt torn apart by the very thoughts he had tried to escape. Silence does not simply soothe us. It unmasks us.

Yet they teach that this unmasking is the beginning of healing.

Silence exposes the worthlessness that we secretly fear is the truth about us. Yet the fathers insist that this “worthlessness” is not the verdict of God. It is the collapse of the false self, the scaffolding of illusion. The sadness and heaviness that come in solitude are signs that the heart is waking from its narcotic dependence on distraction.

Saint Isaac the Syrian says that when a person begins to love silence “he will first encounter warfare on every side.” He teaches that we should not flee this stage, because only by passing through the storm do we begin to taste true stillness. For Isaac, silence is not the reward. It is the crucible. The feeling of isolation is not proof of failure. It is proof of approach.

Modern elders echo this.

Saint Porphyrios says that when one enters silence he feels “naked and powerless.” This is not a sign to run. It is the moment to stand without defense before God. The weakness we feel is the place where grace begins. Elder Aimilianos writes that only in silence does the human soul discover its poverty, and “poverty is the only gateway through which God enters.”

Elder Sophrony says, very plainly, that the person who flees silence flees his own salvation, because silence is where one sees that the self has no existence apart from the love of Christ. The worthlessness that rises in solitude is the revelation of how deeply we have tried to exist without Him.

The fathers are unanimous. Do not trust the feelings that arise at the threshold of silence.

Isolation is a mirage. Worthlessness is a lie. These sensations arise from the dying ego that senses its end. Yet God allows this experience because the humble heart must be grounded in truth. Silence reveals that truth: that we are nothing without God, and that God desires us even in our nothingness.

Abba Moses once said that if you enter the cell and remain there, “the cell will teach you everything.” But it teaches slowly, through the suffering of being alone with oneself. It is precisely this suffering which becomes the ground of communion with God.

The modern elders go further. Elder Zacharias says that the more one endures the emptiness of silence, the more one’s heart is enlarged to receive grace. The one who does not flee eventually discovers that what seemed like abandonment was in reality the invitation to deeper intimacy.

For them, silence is not the absence of life. It is the birthplace of the new life.

They teach us to stay. To bear the heaviness. To accept the feelings of isolation as part of the ascesis. To refuse the temptation to seek relief by filling the void with words, activities, or the familiar patterns that numb the heart.

Stay, they say. Stay long enough for the silence to become prayer, for the emptiness to become humility, for the perceived worthlessness to become the blessed poverty of spirit through which God pours Himself into the soul.

In the desert one meets oneself. Then one meets God. And the fathers tell us that God does not delay His coming to the one who has chosen to remain.