The advantage of a retreat made in solitude and silence - 2

One day the Lord said to St. Teresa: "There are many souls to whom I would willingly speak, but the world makes so great a noise in their hearts that My voice cannot be heard. Oh, if they would but separate themselves a little from the world!" Thus, then, my very dear friend, the Lord wishes to speak to you, but alone and in solitude; since if He would speak to you in your own house, your relations, your friends, and your domestic occupations would continue to make a noise in your heart, and you would be unable to hear His voice. The Saints have for this reason left their homes and their country, and gone to hide themselves in caverns or deserts, or at least in a cell in some Religious house, there to find God and hear His voice. St. Eucherius relates that a certain person seeking a place in which he could find God, went for this purpose to ask counsel from a master of the spiritual life. The man of God led him to a solitary place and then said: "Behold, here God may be found!" adding nothing more. By this he wished him to understand that God is not to be found in the midst of the noise of the world, but in solitude. St. Bernard says that he learned to know God better amongst the beeches and oaks than in all the learned books he had ever studied.

Worldlings love to be in company with friends, to talk and divert themselves; but the desire of the Saints is to live in solitary places, in the midst of forests, or in caverns, there to converse alone with God Who in solitude familiarly converses with souls as a friend with his friend. "Oh, Solitude," exclaims St. Jerome, "in which God familiarly converses with His servants!" The Venerable Vincent Caraffa said that if it had been free to him to wish for anything in this world, he would have asked for nothing but a little grotto with a piece of bread and a spiritual book, there always to live far from men, and conversing alone with God. The Spouse of the Canticles, praising the beauty of a soul living in solitude, compares it to the beauty of the turtle-dove: Thy cheeks are beautiful as the turtle-dove's (Cant. i. 9), precisely because the turtle-dove avoids the company of other birds, and always lives in the most solitary places. Hence it is that the holy Angels are filled with admiration and joy at the beauty and splendour of a soul ascending into Heaven after a life hidden and solitary as in a desert: Who is this that cometh up from the desert, flowing with delights? (Cant. viii. 5).

Now I have written all these things in order to inspire you with a love for holy solitude, for I hope that in the Exercises you are going to perform you will not have to torture your brains, as your pastor said, but that the Lord will make you taste so great a spiritual delight, that you will come out of your Retreat with such an affection for the Spiritual Exercises that you will not fail hereafter to go through them every year. This will be of immense advantage to your soul, whatever state of life you may choose, because in the midst of the world, its various occupations, disturbances, and distractions always produce dryness of spirit, so that it is necessary from time to time to refresh and renew it, as St. Paul exhorts: Be ye renewed in the spirit of your mind (Ephes. iv. 23).

King David, troubled by earthly cares, wished to have wings and to fly from the bustle of the world in order to find rest: Who will give me wings... and I will fly away and be at rest? (Ps. liv. 7). But being unable to leave the world in body, he at least sought from time to time to withdraw himself from the affairs of the realm he governed and dwelt in solitude conversing with God, and thus his spirit found peace. I have gone far off, flying away, and I abode in the wilderness (Ps. v. 8).