There is “a time to be silent and a time to speak” (Ecclesiastes 3:7). In the spiritual life, sometimes it is right for us to be silent, and sometimes it is right to speak. We should try not to speak when we should really be quiet, and we should try not to be quiet when we should really speak. On one extreme, we have to avoid babbling “like the pagans do” (Matthew 6:7). On the other extreme, we have to avoid the mute taciturnity of a stone. This extreme wordlessness is associated with the heresy of quietism which was condemned by Pope Innocent XI with the support of many Jesuits in his bull Coelestis Pastor of 1687.
Today’s encouragement, from the prophet Hosea, should help us to avoid the heresy of quietism. There are times when we do need to speak to God in our prayer. “Take with you words,” Hosea says, “and return to the Lord” (Hosea 14:3). We need to “take words with us” because speaking is not easy. Anybody, even a clod of earth or a sleeping fool can be mute, but to say the right things at the right time in the right way requires wisdom. The best way to acquire that wisdom is to study what God himself has revealed to us, and to use the prayers that he himself has given us, such as the Our Father. The psalms, also, were revealed to us by God, and we know that they were prayed by Jesus himself and all his disciples. Even to this day, the psalms remain an important part of the Church’s daily prayer, which is called “The Divine Office” or “The Liturgy of the Hours.” Tomorrow being the feast of St. Benedict, let us all, like the Benedictine monks and nuns, “take words with us” and return to the Lord in prayer.