Silence & Light

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Quotations are from the Eastern Orthodox tradition of Christianity

 

 

 

John the Solitary in "On Prayer:"

 

For God is silence, and in silence is he sung by means of that psalmody

which is

worthy of Him. I am not speaking of the silence of the tongue, for if

someone

merely keeps his tongue silent, without knowing how to sing in mind and

spirit,

then he is simply unoccupied and becomes filled with evil thoughts: ...

There is

a silence of the tongue, there is a silence of the whole body, there is

a

silence of the soul, there is the silence of the mind, and there is the

silence

of the spirit.

 

 

 

Seeing the light

(Quotations from Orthodox anthology)

 

St. Symeon the New Theologian in "The Catechetical Discourses XXII"

 

During the day he managed a patrician's household and daily went to the

palace,

engaged in worldly affairs, so that no one was aware of his pursuits.

....One

day, as he stood and recited, "God, have mercy upon me, a sinner" Lk.

18:13),

uttering it with his mind rather than his mouth, suddenly a flood of

divine

radiance appeared from above and filled all the room. As this happened

the young

man lost all awareness [of his surroundings] and forgot that he was in a

house

or that he was under a roof. He saw nothing but light all around him and

did not

know if he was standing on the ground. He was not afraid of falling: he

was not

concerned with the world nor did anything pertaining to men and

corporeal beings

enter his mind. Instead, he seemed to himself to have turned into light.

Oblivious of all the world he was filled with tears and with ineffable

joy and

gladness.