The Confession That Rises From Silence

In the monastery at Gethsemani, Thomas Merton once described how words spoken from the surface of the mind remain merely words. But a word that rises from the deep center — from that place where God already dwells — becomes something living, something transformative.

Romans 10:9 tells us that if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our heart, we shall be saved. But what does it mean to believe in the heart? Not the emotional heart, not the intellectual heart, but what the contemplative tradition calls the deep heart — that interior castle, as Teresa of Avila named it, where the soul meets its Beloved in unmediated presence.

Before the confession can be authentic, there must be descent. We must move past the noisy rooms of ego, past our carefully constructed theologies, past even our religious performance, into the silence where the Holy Spirit already prays within us. There, in that sacred emptiness, the mouth finally speaks what the heart has always known. "Jesus is Lord" stops being a doctrinal formula and becomes a lover's recognition — the moment the soul sees the face it has been seeking through every dark night.

Salvation, then, is not a transaction completed at the surface. It is an awakening at the center. The confession of Romans 10:9 is most true when it emerges from contemplative depth — when silence teaches the mouth what to say, and the heart has already said yes to the One who was always there.

Sit in silence today. Let the confession find you before you find the words.