The present frantic pace which is destroying our lives is pushing us towards a decision which we are negligent to make: stop and reflect. We need to talk less and listen more. And this stopping and reflecting is what is really essential for us in order to live our lives to the full. As the German Lutheran Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote from prison in Nazi Germany: “Only by living unreservedly in this life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities... does one become a man and a Christian.” Living unreservedly the cost of our discipleship of Jesus means in fact listening attentively!
It is interesting that at the recent Synod of Bishops concerning “The Word of God in the Life and Mission of the Church,” Bishop Louis Antonio Tagle of the Diocese of Imus in the Philippines made a very relevant contribution on the theme of listening. He said that to let the Word of God sink into our hearts, as Christians, we are called to cultivate in us an ongoing disposition of listening. This disposition is not merely the result of teaching but also of creating a milieu of listening. The latter is crucial indeed!
Bishop Tagle suggested three ways to enhance an attitude of listening to God’s Word. To begin with, listening in faith implies opening our hearts to God’s Word, specifically by allowing it to penetrate and change us from within, and then practice it. This we can call obedience in faith. It constitutes the basis for our life of and in faith.
Secondly, we should never be indifferent to the tragic consequences when the lack of listening takes the lead. Family conflicts, contentious differences between generations and nations, the use of violence are all symptoms of the grave malady of the absence of listening. Unfortunately, people are prisoners of their monologues, inattentiveness, noise, intolerance and self-absorption. Undoubtedly, the Church is called and has the necessary means, through the Holy Spirit who guides her, to help creating a spiritual atmosphere of dialogue, respect, mutuality and self-transcendence.
Thirdly, our God is a listening God. He listens to the fainted yet powerful cry of the just, widows, orphans, persecuted, and the poor who have no voice. And at hearing their voice, He cannot not act in their favour to rescue them. The book of Exodus reminds us of this saving response of God in the face of our own hardships. “Moreover I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians hold in bondage and I have remembered my covenant” (Exod 6, 5). As God listens so much, his Church is challenged to listen in the same way as God does. She must give voice, as He does, to the voiceless, “the least ones”. In this way she will be the genuine sacrament of God’s indwelling presence among us.
The issue is not who speaks but who listens. Let us be humble listeners to God’s Word in order that we might approach our daily realities imbued with an open spirit of listening. Listening makes us human, Christian and holy. May our dealings with our brothers and sisters reflect the most beautiful prayer of Samuel, “Speak Lord, your servant is listening” (1 Sam 3, 9). And to such a prayer God reveals himself to us in the most wonderful and surprising way, just because we would respect and love Him enough to listen to Him! After all, as Paul Tillich said: “The first duty of love is to listen.”
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap
San Gwann