With the Gospel of the Transfiguration, when Christ led Peter, James and John up a high mountain apart, silence is shown to be the condition for hearing God, as the desert of St. Anthony, the hidden years at Nazareth and the forty days in the wilderness all teach. Exterior silence serves interior silence of the imagination and memory, so we must guard the cloister of the soul against the images we let in, fill it with holy ones, and lift the mind to God in the small pauses of a busy day.Listen with the full transcriptGo to episodeSermon of the Day podcast