Listening
Are you a good listener? When I was working in catechesis, we believed that it was extremely important to learn the skill of real listening. Most conversations are not real conversations. We wait patiently until the other person has finished and then put our point of view. We sometimes wait until we are able to put the other person right. But to listen is to give ourselves totally to the other person.
We can think of people who have really listened: Mary, the mother of Jesus, who ‘pondered all these things in her heart’; St John Vianney, the Cure d’Ars who not only heard long hours of confessions, but was listening to fractured hearts. It is a risk to listen, because it means that listening takes our precious time; it means getting involved in another’s life. To listen is to become vulnerable.
As the late Walter Burghardt, a Jesuit priest, said in a sermon: ‘Listening, real listening, is an act of love, and so it is wonderfully human, splendidly Christian…I come to listening as I am, with my own ignorance, my own weakness, my own sinfulness, my own fears, and tears. I share not my words but myself.’
In this Sunday’s Gospel the voice of God the Father, from the cloud, says: This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. He commands us: Listen to him. As we enter this second week of Lent, it is good to ask ourselves the question, ‘Am I really listening to Jesus?’ That is, am I prepared to obey him, to do what he tells me to do? Will I follow him? In the first reading, we hear that it is what Abram did. He obeyed the Lord by leaving his own country, his kindred and his father’s house for an unknown land.
Or are we like the person who said, ‘Speak, Lord, and your servant will think it over’?
Jesus is the revelation of God; he is the Word enfleshed. 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, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. (Hebrews 1:1-2). Jesus is God’s revelation to us. The Vatican II document on the Liturgy states: ‘Jesus is present in His word, since it is He Himself who speaks when the holy scriptures are read in the Church.’ When we hear the New Testament read to us, it is Jesus Himself speaking to us. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we need to have an open heart.
Pope Leo in his recent catechesis said that Sacred Scripture is ‘the means by which we come to know the incarnate living Word of God who is Jesus Christ. Indeed, praying with Scripture opens the door for an intimate relationship with God who, through these sacred writings, invites us into conversation with Him.’
Lord, give me an open and listening heart so that your Word will set me on fire.
