COMMENT RECEIVED ON “LISTEN”:

I agree with you 100 %; Although, for me, It is easy to say, and so hard to do.

Listening to God, requires total silence; it requires being able to stop the mind and focus your attention in listening. One issue that happens to me, is being afraid of not being able to listen to God, so the first reaction is to activate your mind and assume that He already did talk to me. So the question is how do you know what to listen for?

MY RESPONSE:

Listening does require total silence in prayer but that is not the only time we can listen to God’s Word. We listen to God and our Lord in others, in every day events, when we worship, as we admire creation, deal with difficulties, read Scripture and other spiritual readings—the list is endless. We are always listening!

If we are listening, does this mean that we hear the message God is sending us? We hear many things during the day—traffic noises, TV, radio, stereos, IPODS, people talking—but are we listening to these noises and paying attention to them? Probably not. They are background noises that are there and we hear them but we don’t take them in.

Listening to God is different. It is the amount of attention we pay to what we hear and take in that makes a difference. If a relative or friend or stranger comes up to us and asks for our time in order to talk to us about a concern, do we stop what we are doing to listen to them? Perhaps if we thought it was God speaking to us, we would!

When we read Scripture and a verse catches our attention and we need to think about it, do we realize this is God speaking to us?

At Mass, when we give the sign of peace to those around us, do we smile automatically as we shake their hand or do we look them in the eyes and inwardly bless them? Have we heard God deep within asking us to be sincere in our handshake and truly bless others?

Take a walk outside. Look at the mountains. Breathe in the dry desert air. Admire the blooms on plants. Take pleasure in the birds, butterflies, and insects flying around in the early morning air. Fill your eyes with the beauty of the blue sky and floating clouds and the night sky with its shining stars and glowing moon. God speaks in these ways, too.

Hug your wife and children. Tell your parents you love them. Say a kind word today to those you work with. Compliment someone who needs to be uplifted. Be patient with those who annoy you. God is asking for your attention. Yes! He is speaking to you to be God’s Word to others!

Pray and listen, we are told. We can pray wherever we are at any time of the day. Therefore, we can listen to God speak wherever we are at any time of the day. Awareness of the present moment is how we listen to God. He is here, now and always. Open the ears of your heart and listen to the Lord Who abides deep within.

Alma Maish

LISTEN

In the beginning…God said…

Genesis is the first book of the Bible and makes it clear that God speaks to us as He begins the litany of His Word and creates the universe. The Scriptures continue with other references to the Word of God coming to us at different times in history. “God said…” the prophets warned the people when they had strayed from God. They refused to listen and suffered the consequences of indifference to their One True God.

What are we to do with God’s Word? We are to listen! In the Hebrew, to listen means to hear and obey. When you hear the Word of God and listen and obey, you will follow the path God has set before you. Your faith will be strong, your love shall be great, your thoughts pure, your words kind. Compassion will fill your heart. The beauty of God’s universe will overwhelm you. His unconditional love will humble you.

The Psalms also ask us to listen. Psalm 46:11 commands that we “Be still and know that I am God.” If we are “still” we are listening. If we are listening, wisdom comes to us (Psalm 49:4) and we know that God is our Father-Creator, the one who fights for us, our protector, the one who saves us through His Son, Jesus Christ.

King Solomon did not ask for riches when the Lord God appeared to him in a dream and informed him he could ask for something from God and it would be his (1 Kings 3:5). He asked for a “listening (understanding) heart” so that he could rule wisely. He chose to listen to God and was granted wisdom and built a beautiful temple to honor the Lord and where the Lord would dwell among His people.

We might not have a dream or vision in which God speaks to us directly, but as we pray we can ask for a listening heart. By listening in prayer we will know God in the Biblical sense, since intimacy with God means that He is within us. “Abide” is a word that John uses frequently in his Gospel to illustrate how the Father is always with us. Abide has a beautiful connotation of resting and remaining within a dwelling. Just as the Tabernacle Tent in the Exodus desert was a sanctuary where Yahweh God would “dwell in their midst,” in the very heart of their community, the dwelling became a sign of God’s love and protection as the Israelites trudged through the desert (Exodus 25:8).

When we pray, we are inviting our Lord to “abide” in us. He is literally setting up a “tent” or “tabernacle” in our heart where He remains with us always. Christ abides in the depths of our soul where He speaks to us and this is where we go in prayer to abide and listen to Him.

We can speak to God at different times, in different places and in many ways. After formal prayer or spontaneous requests, we should make time to listen to Him as well. “Be still,” the Psalmist asks of us. When we are still the silence can envelop us and surround us with the peace and quiet and calm we need to endure our every day experiences. Joy is in the silence of prayer as we abide in the presence of God.

It is fitting that after we listen, we conclude our quiet prayer time with a proclamation of gratitude and praise. We are to thank God for all His blessings, mercy and love. We are to praise him with all the love in our hearts.

Pray, listen, obey, and give thanks and praise. Enter the silence of prayer and rejoice in the Lord!

Alma Maish

DEMAND FOR A SIGN

LUKE 11:29-32

"This generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it, except the sign of Jonah." Some take this to mean the three days and three nights that Jonah was inside the belly of the large fish, comparing it to the three days Jesus was in the darkness of the tomb after his crucifixion and death. But Jesus is not referring to his three days in the tomb, he is referring to the sign of the Ninevite's repentance after Jonah preached to them and they turned to the Lord God.

Jonah resented the Lord's love for the Ninevites because they were different, they were not the Chosen People, and did not deserve the Lord's attention. Only Jews deserved that honor and Jonah, as a Jew, was reluctant to preach to them. However, it took only a day of his preaching to make the Ninevites realize how far they were from the Lord and repented. Instead of celebrating his overnight success, Jonah was angry. He did not realize he was a sign of God's mercy and love.

Like the Jews in Luke's Gospel, we demand signs, too, so the Church has given them to us with different liturgical seasons. Lent is a sign that it is time for change, a time for repentance, a time to think about returning to the Lord with our whole heart. The first sign of Lent is putting ashes on our foreheads as a symbol of repentance and mourning. The Ninevites did something similar--they proclaimed a fast and wore sackcloth to show outwardly their repentance and mourning. Are we so different from the Ninevites? Obviously not, if we need the season of Lent to make us think about changing our daily lives.

Some take the putting on of ashes seriously and others think of it as only a symbol of something done for one day--Ash Wednesday. Our smudged foreheads show the world we are faithful Catholics. However, there are those who only come to church on Ash Wednesday, Easter and Christmas. They don't feel the need to repent, therefore, nothing changes in their lives. They wash their faces and continue the rest of the year as they were before Ash Wednesday.

Ashes should be the outward sign that we repent and look toward a new life with our Risen Lord. As we darken our foreheads, we should pray that we can overcome the darkness of sin in our everyday lives. Forty days is not enough time to accomplish this, so we should strive to change at least one thing about ourselves during Lent. Once the 40 days of Lent are over, will we forget the sign of ashes as a sign of a path to new life? Like those "faithful" Ash Wednesday Catholics, will we continue as though ashes are only an external symbol instead of a sign for inner change?

At Baptism, we were anointed on the forehead with oil after being plunged into the holy water as the sign of entering into the tomb with Christ and rising with him into a new life. On Ash Wednesday we acknowledge that we have not been true to our baptismal promises. There is no water, no entering of the tomb, no rising until Easter. There are only the dark ashes to remind us that we need to re-commit ourselves to follow Christ fully. May this Lent be a sign to you that you can overcome the darkness of sin and rise with Christ into a new life with Him.

Alma Maish