By Andrea Picciotti-Bayer
Cardinal Robert Sarah, in his new book The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise, offers a profound examination of the silence that “leads us toward God and others so as to place ourselves humbly and generously at their service.”
The initial inspiration to write this book came from the Guinean cardinal’s visits with a young religious unable to speak due to the multiple sclerosis that eventually consumed his life. Theirs was a friendship that “was born in silence, it grew in silence, and it continues to exist in silence.”
This friendship also led to Sarah’s visit to the Grande Chartreuse, the principal monastery of the monks of the Carthusian Order. These two encounters, in addition to the Cardinal’s own experience as a great contemplative, motivated this treatise on the indispensable role of silence for the interior life.
