The Word is a silent Word. The very words of Christ are surrounded in silence. They are born in the silence that he desires to live in.

First of all, from the silence of his hidden life. Come to announce the truth to all the times of the world, he only speaks publicly for three of his thirty-three years, even though just one of his words could have illuminated the despair of a human life.

Then the silences of his public life. After the baptism, “the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts” (Mk 1:12–13). He is alone when the Samaritan woman comes to Jacob’s well. He likes to retire to the  heights: “He went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose twelve of them, whom he also named apostles” (Lk 6:12–13). At the first multiplication of bread, “after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone” (Mt 14:23). At the agony in the garden, he goes a bit further than the three apostles, “about a stone’s throw” (Lk 22: 41).

Here below, silence is the condition of words that are true. What value is there in words that are not enclosed in silence? They are dead leaves. They go wherever the wind blows them.
Charles Cardinal Journet (1891–1975)