Don't think that those who enter the silence of God are "silent". Nothing could be farther from the truth! Silence is a thunder! You will be able to hear it everywhere. Your nights and days will be filled with it. ...Many confuse silence with solitude. Solitude is being alone with God, waiting for God. But silence is an immense sea into which you enter and never leave. And once you have plunged into this silence, you will always be silent.
If you are truly called to a solitary lifestyle, eventually celibacy must follow. Solitude invites the presence of God, a presence which so consumes the soul, there is no lover energy available for an intense human commitment to intimacy. The deeper one goes into spiritual solitude, the lighter one travels. But it is not for us to divest ourselves -- at our own willed choosing -- of the things that are necessary for life within society. It is for God to strip us, often painfully, of them at a time when God knows -- if we do not -- that we must go more lightly into this Heart of Love.