How long has it been since I learned something by heart? What does it mean to know something by heart? Modern man reads silently and quickly. He corrects his children from moving their lips when they read. He tends to confront written words with his eye alone. But the ancients read aloud. When the disciple Philip was led by the Spirit to the chariot of the Ethiopian slave, he heard the man reading the prophet Isaiah. (See Acts 8:30.) Writing in the fifth century, St. Augustine records his surprise at the extraordinary practice of St. Ambrose, who read silently. “When he read, his eyes scanned the page and his heart explored the meaning, but his voice was silent and his tongue was still.” How could this habit be explained? Why did St. Ambrose not read aloud like everyone else? St. Augustine hazards the guess that the aged man read silently because “he needed to spare his voice, which quite easily became hoarse.” Those of former times did not hurry when they read the word of God. They did not use only their eyes. They placed the word in their mouths and in their hearts.
The Lord’s Question: Thoughts on the Life of Response by Dennis Rasmussen. Brigham Young University Press. April 1985. Chapter Three, “What Mean the Testimonies?” p.26, 27
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