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Robert Sarah QUOTES

Robert Sarah QUOTES

1 " For someone who is far from God, silence is a difficult confrontation with his own self and with the rather dismal realities that are at the bottom of our soul. Hence, man enters a mentality that resembles a denial of reality. He gets drunk on all sorts of noises so as to forget who he is. Postmodern man seeks to anesthetize his own atheism. "

― Robert Sarah , The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise

2 " Our world no longer hears God because it is constantly speaking, at a devastating speed and volume, in order to say nothing. "

― Robert Sarah , The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise

3 " Without radical humility that is expressed in gestures of adoration and in sacred rituals, no friendship with God is possible. Silence manifests this connection in an obvious way. True Christian silence makes itself sacred silence first so as to become silence of communion. "

― Robert Sarah , The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise

4 " Today, some priests treat the Eucharist with the utmost contempt. They see the Mass as a talkative banquet where Christians faithful to the teaching of Jesus, divorced-and-remarried persons, men and women in an adulterous situation, unbaptized tourists who participate in the Eucharistic celebrations of the large anonymous crowds can indiscriminately have access to the Body and Blood of Christ. "

― Robert Sarah , The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise

5 " Why are men so noisy during the liturgies while Christ's prayer was silent? The words of the Son of God come from the heart, and the heart is silent. Why do we not know how to speak with a silent heart? The heart of Jesus does not speak. It radiates with love because its language comes from the divine depths. "

― Robert Sarah , The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise

6 " Christ is certainly distressed to see and to hear priests and bishops, who ought to be protecting the integrity of the teaching of the Gospel and of doctrine, multiply words and writings that weaken the rigor of the Gospel by their deliberately ambiguous, confused statements. "

― Robert Sarah , The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise

7 " There is a great risk that Christians may become idolaters if they lose the meaning of silence. Our words inebriate us; they confine us to what is created. Bewitched and imprisoned by the noise of human speech, we run the risk of designing worship to our specifications, a god in our own image. Words bring with them the temptation of the golden calf! Only silence leads man beyond words, to the mystery, to worship in spirit and in truth. Silence is a form of mystagogy; it brings us into the mystery without spoiling it. "

― Robert Sarah , The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise

8 " Now, celebrations become tiring because they unfold in noisy chattering. The liturgy is sick. The most striking symptom of this sickness is perhaps the omnipresence of the microphone. It has become so indispensable that one wonders how priests were able to celebrate before it was invented. "

― Robert Sarah , The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise

9 " Celebration toward the east fosters silence. Indeed, there is less temptation for the celebrant to monopolize the conversation. Facing the Lord, he is less tempted to become a professor giving a lesson throughout the Mass, reducing the altar to a podium centered on the microphone instead of the Cross. "

― Robert Sarah , The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise

10 " Words often bring with them the illusion of transparency, as though they allowed us to understand everything, control everything, put everything in order. Modernity is talkative because it is proud, unless the converse is true. Is our incessant talking perhaps what makes us proud? "

― Robert Sarah , The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise

11 " I asked the earth and it answered, “I am not He”; and all things that are in the earth made the same confession. I asked the sea and the deeps and the creeping things, and they answered, “We are not your God, seek higher.” I asked the winds that blow, and the whole air with all that is in it answered, “Anaximenes was wrong; I am not God.” I asked the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars, and they answered, “Neither are we God whom you seek.” And I said to all the things that throng about the gateways of the senses: “Tell me of my God, since you are not He. Tell me something of Him.” And they cried out in a great voice: “He made us.” My question was my gazing upon them, and their answer was their beauty.

Man is a silent, incarnate word of God. The moon, the stars, the sun, the sea, the firmament are the visible proof of the existence and omnipotence of God, who created them out of sheer love. These creatures are the powerful, mysterious voice of God. "

― Robert Sarah

12 " Nouwen, Henri J. M. The Way of the Heart: Connecting with God through Prayer, Wisdom, and Silence. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. "

― Robert Sarah , The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise

13 " The spiritual life goes through alternating phases in which God successively shows and hides himself, makes himself heard and is quiet. Prayer teaches us the subtleties of divine speech. Is God being silent, or are we not hearing him because our interior ear and our intellect are not accustomed to his language? The fruit of silence is learning to discern his voice, even though it always keeps its mystery. "

― Robert Sarah

14 " Without a strong reaffirmation of Christ's teaching as it has always been handed down by the Magisterium of the Church, there is no ecumenism.

Who remembers the words of Pope Paul VI at his General Audience on August 28, 1974? He fearlessly declared: 'What sort of ecumenism could we construct in that way? Where would Christianity end up, and moreover, where would Catholicism be if today, under pressure from a specious but admissible pluralism, we accepted as legitimate the doctrinal disintegration and therefore also the ecclesial disintegration that it can bring with it? "

― Robert Sarah , The Day is Now Far Spent

15 " La oración consiste en imaginar en silencio la vida concreta y diaria de Jesús. No se trata de recordar un suceso histórico, sino de procurar que el Hijo de Dios entre silenciosamente en nuestro corazón. "

― Robert Sarah , The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise

16 " But here is my hope: God willing, when he wills and as he wills, the reform of the reform will take place in the liturgy. Despite the gnashing of teeth, it will happen, for the future of the Church is at stake. To ruin the liturgy is to ruin our relationship to God and the concrete expression of our Christian faith. "

― Robert Sarah , The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise

17 " Just as when we were children, we were afraid to be alone in the dark and could only be assured by the presence of someone who loved us. Well this is exactly what happened on Holy Saturday, the voice of God resounded in the realm of death. The unimaginable occurred; namely, love penetrated Hell. "

― Robert Sarah

18 " Many fervent Christians who are moved by the Passion and death of Christ on the Cross no longer have the strength to weep or to utter a cry of pain to the priests and bishops who make their appearance as entertainers and set themselves up as the main protagonists of the Eucharist. These believers tell us nevertheless: "We do not want to gather with men around a man! We want to see Jesus! Show him to us in the silence and humility of your prayer! "

― Robert Sarah , The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise

19 " Celebrating Mass facing east, by breaking up the face-to-face, private get-together, helps to prevent turning the liturgy into the community's celebration of itself. "

― Robert Sarah , The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise

20 " Some priests unfaithful to the "memory" of Jesus insist more on the festive aspect and the fraternal dimension of the Mass than on the bloody sacrifice of Christ on the Cross. The importance of interior dispositions and the necessity of reconciling ourselves with God by agreeing to let ourselves be purified by the sacrament of confession are no longer in fashion today. "

― Robert Sarah , The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise