I have been reading more of Cardinal Robert Sarah’s The Power of Silence, about which I blogged on Thursday 18 May. It is an extraordinary book, born of theological scholarship and an innate understanding of contemplation, as well as being almost paradoxical in its requirement of words to describe the importance of silence in the Christian life.
Now halfway through it, I am struck as never before about how much worldly events and ‘busyness’ intrude and encroach upon the inner world of the spirit. Most interesting is the actual genesis of the book. Although theoretically an “interview” with French journalist Nicolas Diat (who also interviewed the Cardinal for his book God or Nothing) it is, like this earlier book, merely a springboard for Cardinal Sarah to describe the true nature of Catholic Christianity. This does not mean immersion in social or charitable projects, an obsession with liturgical reform, endless ecumenical ventures and all the other ways in which we might be distracted from “the one thing needful”.
