A Listening Heart
In preparation for 2025, the Holy Year entitled Pilgrims of Hope, Pope Francis has encouraged us to make this year of 2024 a Year of Prayer for each one of us.
The readings in today’s Mass help me focus on the various attitudes we need to cultivate in our own prayer life. In the first reading (from the book of Samuel) the boy Samuel, living in the temple, hears one night a voice calling him by name: ‘Samuel, Samuel.’ He at first thinks it’s the old priest calling him, but eventually is advised by Eli to answer, ‘Speak Lord, your servant is listening.’ When he says this, the voice of God gives him as a prophet for all the people.
Too often I am speaking so much in my prayer, telling God what I want, that I forget to say to God, ‘Speak Lord, your servant is listening.’ I need to say to God: ‘Lord, what are you saying to me about the worries I have, the anxieties I feel, the decisions I need to make? Tell me how you want me to pray. Give me the words.’ This is better than saying instead: ‘Listen Lord, your servant is speaking.’ We need to cultivate a listening heart in prayer.
In the Gospel today John points to Jesus passing by, and says to his two disciples, ‘Behold the Lamb of God.’ They follow Jesus, who turns around and says to them: ‘What do you want?’ They respond by saying, ‘Where do you live?’
Jesus doesn’t give them an address or a postcode, but extends an invitation: ‘Come and see.’ He invites them to his house. We will never know what they talked about, but we do know that, as a result of their spending time with Jesus, one of them, Andrew, then went next day to seek out his brother Simon and said to him, ‘Come and meet Jesus. He is the Messiah.’
Lord Jesus, we hear your words of invitation addressed to us personally. Grant us the grace to know you in prayer. May we experience prayer as a time when we look at you as you are looking at us.
We ask that the Lord will give us grace to develop the capacity for listening to God’s Word, in the varying circumstances of our lives. May we cultivate the habit of quiet, attentive prayer. Like Samuel and the disciples, we need to seek the dwelling-place of the Lord. Of course, we may find this quiet in our home, perhaps even on the way to work. Or the Church offers a unique privilege for experiencing the Word — both to challenge and to heal us — in the Eucharist, and in the other sacraments and prayers of the Liturgy.
Engraved in the wood panelling of the sanctuary, here in St Thomas of Canterbury Church, are the words Magister adest et vocat te. The English translation is: ‘The Teacher is here and calls you’ (spoken by Martha to her sister Mary, in John 11:28). The other Latin sentence on the wood panelling is Loquere Domine quia audit servus — the words spoken by Samuel in today’s first reading, ‘Speak Lord, your servant is listening.’ May we in the parish, this year, develop the same listening attitude that characterised Samuel and the friends of Jesus.
