Beyond the Tongue

Why Silence is Worthy of Love

Love silence above everything else, for it brings you near to fruit which the tongue is too feeble to expound. — Saint Isaac of Syria

Isaac of Syria, also known as Isaac of Ninevah, was a seventh century bishop whose writings, especially his Ascetical Homilies, are considered major mystical writings of the first millennium. But I will admit, as much as I love it that he advocates for silence, I am a bit taken aback that he would say “Love silence above everything else” — doesn’t that sound like something one would say only about God?

In this commentary on the Ten Commandments, Out of the House of Slavery Brian A. Haggerty has this to say about the first commandment (“I am the Lord your God… you shall have no other gods before me”): “Only God has proven worthy of unreserved faith and unbounded trust.” I think we can assume that if God only deserves our faith and trust, then only God should be loved “above everything else.”

But here’s old St. Isaac, telling us to love silence in precisely this way!

Is silence a created thing? Or is silence part of the ex nihilo out of which all things — all created things — were formed? Sure, this question is on the slippery slope to a kind of metaphysical philosophy that quickly seems arcane — and irrelevant to the practical concerns of life. But maybe it would help us to understand my Isaac speaks so highly of it.

Then there is the famous line of Thomas Keating’s “Silence is God’s first language, everything else is a poor translation.” Is loving silence a way of loving the very language of God: God’s words, God’s speech, God’s very thought?

Of course, we can take Isaac at face value: silence to be loved supremely because the language of humanity is simply “too feeble” to express the fruit (of the Spirit, one may assume). But I, for one, am uncomfortable with any idea that the justification for supreme love is only because nothing else is worthy of it. That seems too small a vision, at least for my taste.

The only time the Bible dares to define God is in I John, where more than once the author proclaims “God is love.” Is it too bold to suggest that God is silence? Perhaps. But mystics like Isaac of Syria or Thomas Keating — or Rashi, the medieval Jewish Bible commentator — invite us to reckon with silence as something (if we can call it a “thing”) that brings us closer to God than any human tongue or concept. That’s bold enough: but it is also a ringing endorsement of contemplative prayer as far more than some psychologically soothing practice: the prayer of silence is the only sure threshold to the unlimited mystical abyss of the Divine Presence.

Source for quotations:
Daily Readings with St Isaac of Syria. Templegate Publishers, page 46.
Brian A. Haggerty, Out of the House of Slavery. Paulist Press, page 135.
Thomas Keating, Invitation to Love: The Way of Christian Contemplation, page 105.