Are you taking care of your spiritual needs?

Silvester Gozzolini made a radical choice to take care of his own spiritual needs…and inspired others to do the same. When Silvester became a priest, he worked passionately as a pastor, seeking to bring reform to the Church and rid it of scandal. After 10 years facing challenges and resistance, he felt God calling him away from the world and became a hermit. With the wisdom he gained in silence, he founded a new religious order, eventually opening eleven monasteries across Italy. 

Silvester understood his great need for a vibrant spiritual life. Do you? You have real spiritual needs—for stillness, silence, solitude, simplicity, Scriptures, and Sacraments. 

Even though your spiritual needs are astoundingly important, they are easily ignored, but the results of doing so often aren’t apparent until long after we first start ignoring them. Yet the negative impact on our ability to thrive is massive and immediate.

Why do we ignore our spiritual needs? Because we are afraid to go into silence. The noise of the world is preventing us from hearing the gentle voice within that always counsels us to embrace the-best-version-of-ourselves. We will begin to hear this voice again only when we make a habit of withdrawing from the noise of the world and immersing ourselves in silence. We needn’t spend hours in silence each day or become hermits like Silvester, but nothing brings priority to our days like a period of silence each morning.

Everyday life poses questions. We all have a need to search our hearts for answers to those questions. Every day we are faced with a myriad of choices and opportunities. We need time away from all the other voices to discern which of these choices and opportunities will enable us

to become the-best-version-of-ourselves and which are merely distractions. These exercises are performed most effectively alone, in the precious solitude of the classroom of silence.

In the silence, we see at one time the person we are now and the person we are capable of becoming. Seeing these two visions at one time automatically challenges us to change and grow. It is precisely for this reason that we fill our lives with noise, to distract ourselves

from the challenge to change.

Many of life’s great lessons can be learned only in the classroom of silence, especially those that teach us about our individual talents and how we can use them to fulfill our destiny.



Feast Day: November 26

Feast Day Shared By: Saint Siricius, Saint Leonard of Porto Maurizio, and Saint Sylvester

Canonized: 1598

Canonized By: Pope Clement VIII