This Week’s Thought from Fr. Bob Warren, SA: There is so much contained in our Gospel today that we could spend the whole day discussing it. I would like to concentrate on a single word spoken by God to Peter, James and John – “Listen”. We live in an age of noise and sound, so much sound that it is difficult to listen. I would suggest that this Lent is a good time to take God’s command seriously and listen. It is not always easy to listen to each other and listening can be difficult. You see, most conversations are not conversations at all. Either they are monologues where someone waits patiently until the other person has finished. Then says exactly what they would have said if the other person had not said a word. Or, conversations become debates. A person does listen to another but only in order to disagree, find fault, intercept or destroy. To listen is to give yourself totally and put yourself into the other person’s mind and heart, not just hearing words but a human person. The problem is, to listen is to risk. It takes your precious time often when you can least afford it. When you listen, you take on other person’s problems when you have enough of your own. It means getting involved. If you listen, you open yourself to your family, those at work or those around you. To listen, really listen, is an act of love. It is wonderfully human and splendidly Christian to be where another can reach out to you and you share not words but yourself. Second, I would suggest that during Lent you make time to listen to Christ. This is the command of the Father. “Listen to Him.” This is what Peter, James and John were ordered to do because here is, at once, God’s Son and God’s revelation. As St. Paul reminds us in his Letter to the Hebrews – In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by a Son. This is not pious poetry. It is profound truth. Jesus is God’s revelation to us. He is the point of personal contact between God and us. How does Jesus speak to us? Christ is present in His word since it is He who speaks when the Holy Scriptures are read in church. Do you believe that? Do you really believe it when the reader says this is the word of the Lord? If you do, how do you listen? As attentively as Moses on Mt. Sinai when he received the Ten Commandments? As open to God’s word as the teenage virgin of Nazareth? Do you marvel like His townspeople at the words that fall from Jesus lips? Has repetition dulled your appetite? Christ is less charismatic than Justin Bieber and less exciting than the Kardashian Family. Listening to Jesus is not the same as listening to others. It requires the same intensity and openness, but holds a greater risk. When the Father told Peter, James and John to listen to Jesus, He was saying obey Him. Do what He tells you and follow Him. If you really listen to Jesus in the proclaimed word, you have a fair chance of hearing Him in your everyday life speaking in your heart. You will hear Him as truly as anyone you love profoundly speaking to your heart. Our God is not imprisoned in a book, not even a book of His own inspiring. God also speaks to us in the world around us. As the palmist told us, the heavens are telling the glory of God and the firmament proclaims His handiwork. God could fashion nothing unless it imaged some perfection of His. There is no blade of grass, no flower, no range of mountains and no ocean that does not speak of God. If you miss this, it is because you are not tuned into God. You are not listening. God also speaks to us in our loneliness, our pain, our suffering or when nothing is going right. Only by listening almost in desperation do we hear God speak. He is not explaining, defending or justifying. He is only saying trust me. “I am closer to you now than ever before. Every Gethsemane is my garden. Every Calvary is my cross.” If you want to do something for Lent, if you want to share in the dying and rising of Jesus, forget the diet and the giving up. Simply listen, listen to one another, listen to Christ in the proclaimed word and listen to the word of God in the world around you. Obey the command of God and listen.
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 12:17:01 +0000
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