To receive the grace of God, you must go to a desert place and stay a while. There you can be emptied and unburdened of everything that does not pertain to God. There the house of our soul is swept clean to make room for God alone to dwell. . . . We need this silence, this absence of every creature, so that God can build his hermitage within us.
— Charles de Foucauld, Charles de Foucauld: Essential Writings by Charles de Foucauld, Robert Ellsberg, editor