The very impressive Cardinal Sarah, prefect for the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, is explaining the importance of silence during Mass in weekend articles in the L'Osservetore Romano.
The article in Italian can be found here.
Christine Niles' short article about it begins :
Cardinal Robert Sarah is stressing the necessity of silence during Mass. In a weekend column in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's newspaper, the head of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments explains the role and importance of silence in the sacred liturgy.
Cardinal Sarah contrasts between virtuous, "mystical" silence as opposed to "reprehensible" silence, the silence of omission owing to "cowardice, selfishness or hardness heart."
Mystical silence should prevail at Mass as "an expression of awe of God." The soul that practices silence in the liturgy, he says, is the humble soul, one who "desires to leave room for others, and especially for the wholly Other, God."
On the other hand, the soul that cannot remain silent indicates a self-important soul, one who "wants to show off" or needs "to fill his inner emptiness" with noise. God, Cdl. Sarah notes, operates in silence, and comes to the soul in silence.
He counters the argument that silence is an act of passivity or idleness. On the contrary, it is work and involves active purification of the mind of all that distracts from God. ....
...more here.
