Bossuet and Silence

"The great things that God works within his creatures naturally happen in silence, in a certain divine movement that suppresses all speech.  For what could we say, and what could Mary have said that could have equalled what she felt?  Thus God's secret is kept under the seal unless he himself opens the lips and makes the words come forth.  Human advantages are nothing if they remain unknown and if the world does not lay hold of them.  Those God makes, however, have in themselves an inestimable worth that one wants to share with God alone.  Men, how vain you are, and how vain is the ostentation that moves you to make a display of your feeble accomplishments for the eyes of men just as vain as you!  'O men, how long will you love vain words and seek after lies?' (Ps. 4:2).  All the goods that one vaunts are nothing in themselves: opinion alone gives them their value.  There are no true goods but the ones that can be tasted in silence with God.  'Be still and know that I am God' (Ps. 46:10).  'O taste and see that the Lord is good' (Ps. 34:8).  Love solitude and silence.  Draw back from the noisy conversation of the world.  Stay closed, O my mouth, and do not deafen my heart, for it is listening to God.  Stop interrupting and troubling my sweet attentiveness.  Vacate et videte, says the psalmist: "live in holy leisure and see."  And again: 'Taste and see that the Lord is good.'  Allow this celestial taste to speak in you.  Gustate et videte, quoniam suavis est Dominus."

-- Jacques Bénigne Bossuet