The Word That Speaks in Silence

(Meditation Based Upon Psalm 12 Grail Translation)

“Help, O Lord, for good men have vanished; truth has gone from the sons of men.

Falsehood they speak one to another, with lips that are lying and hearts that are false.”

—Psalm 12 (Grail)

The psalmist laments the poverty of language in a fallen world.  Words, those sacred vessels given to man to reveal truth, have become the instruments of deceit.  They multiply endlessly, yet reveal nothing.  They promise communion but breed division.  “Their tongue is a sharp sword,” says another psalm; “with flattering lips they speak.”  This is not merely a moral failure but a spiritual wound: the fracture between the tongue and the heart, between speech and reality.

The Fathers understood that this corruption of words is born from the corruption of the heart.  When the heart no longer abides in truth, the mouth cannot help but lie.  St. Isaac the Syrian writes that “where words multiply, sin is not far,” for speech unanchored in silence becomes self-assertion.  The Desert Fathers fled the cities not simply to escape noise, but to escape the tyranny of their own speech.  “A word,” said Abba Arsenius, “has often made me regret speaking, but never my silence.”  They knew that the tongue, like the mind, must be baptized in stillness before it can bear witness to God.

The psalm continues: “The promises of the Lord are promises that are pure, silver refined in a furnace, seven times purified.”  Against the falsity of human speech stands the Word of God, pure, radiant, and whole.  Unlike our words, His Word is not a sound among others but a living Presence, “equal to Himself,” as the Fathers of the Church taught.  In Christ, the Word became flesh not to increase the world’s noise, but to reveal the divine silence that undergirds all creation.  Every utterance of the Lord is fire; every silence of His is love.

And this is both beauty and warning.  Beauty, because the soul that listens may still hear this Word speaking beneath all words: the quiet voice that brings peace to the heart and restores truth to speech.  Warning, because to play lightly with words, to speak of God without fear, to multiply our own opinions without purification, is to risk profaning the holy.  Elder Sophrony wrote that every word about God must be born of prayer, or it will wound both speaker and listener.  In an age intoxicated by expression, this restraint seems madness.  Yet it is the only path to sanity.

We are surrounded now by an ocean of language: endless commentary, assertion, and self-display.  The noise has become a second atmosphere, in which the soul can scarcely breathe.  Amid this flood, the psalm’s plea returns: “Help, O Lord, for truth has gone from the sons of men.”  The modern ascetic must learn the discipline of silence not as withdrawal but as purification, so that words, when they must be spoken, come forth like silver tested in fire.

Archimandrite Zacharou reminds us that when the heart is still, the Word of God descends gently within, “as light kindled from light.”  It is this Word alone that speaks truly, for it speaks from eternity.  It does not argue or persuade; it illumines.  It does not flatter; it convicts.  It does not multiply; it simply is.  And when that Word takes root, human speech is redeemed: the mouth becomes an icon of the Incarnation, the tongue a flame of Pentecost.

Let us therefore guard our words as we would guard the chalice, for they either consecrate or defile.  Let us measure them by silence, and speak only what is necessary for love.  Then the heart will know again the sweetness of the Lord’s pure promise: the Word who dwells not in the noise of men but in the quiet where truth is born.