January 12, 2015
Monday of week 1 in Ordinary Time
Jesus Talks
In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our
ancestors through the prophets;
in these last days, he has spoken to us through the Son.
“Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says,
‘If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts’” (Hebrews 3:7).
We can hear his voice today—and
every day of the year—if we choose to listen for it. And that is not
complicated at all—if we don’t harden our hearts.
To “harden our hearts” we don’t have
to hear and reject what God says. We just have to be unaware he is talking to
us.
The Christian life is not centered
in what we do, but in what we know, hope for and desire. These are more important than what we do, because all our
actions follow from these three sources. So when we “examine our conscience,”
we should be more concerned about what we truly believe, really set our hopes
on, and deeply desire than about our concrete behavior.
It is true, our actions give us
clues to the reality of our faith, hope and love. But what we do does not
reveal—without reflection, at least—what we are. Examination of our behavior is
the beginning, not the end, of self-knowledge.
So before we ask whether we are
listening for God’s voice, we have to ask whether we know he talks to us. Do we
know that? Do I myself know that? Or is it just something we have been told?
Our spontaneous first step—because
of our technological cultural conditioning—would be to ask, “How do I know God talks to me?” But our
first step should be just to establish the fact. We do this by examining our
“consciousness.” We get in touch with our hearts. Down deep, do I know or not
know that God communicates with the human race—and that he talks to me?
If I have been baptized, I know this
by the light—the free gift—of faith. (That is Catholic doctrine: Baptism
unfailingly gives Life and Light). I have eyes to see. I may not be using them,
but I am not blind. I just might not have them open.
This is where actions count. There
is something I can do to make it a confirmed experience that I “know what I
know.” I can listen for the voice of God, and hear it, by opening my eyes as
well as my ears.
I can start reading the words of God
in Scripture.
The bishops who assembled for the
Second Vatican Council in 1962 proclaimed a “real presence” of God in the
Scriptures that they compared to the real presence of Jesus in Eucharist:
The Church has
always venerated the divine Scriptures just as she venerates the body of the
Lord, since, especially in the sacred liturgy, she unceasingly receives and
offers to the faithful the bread of life from the table both of God's word and
of Christ's body… For in the sacred books, the Father who is in heaven meets His children with great love and speaks with them.
When the Sacred
Scriptures are read in the Church, God
himself speaks to his people, and Christ,
present in his own word, proclaims the
Gospel (“On Divine Revelation,” 21; General
Instruction on the Roman Missal, 29).
This happens whenever we seek
contact with God by opening our mind to what he is saying to us in the Bible.
The “three R’s” of praying through Scripture are: Read, Reflect, Respond.
To begin this new year, the “Holy
Spirit says, ‘If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.’”
It is not too over-simplistic to say
that whether we “harden our hearts” or not depends on whether we begin to open
the Bible.
In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our
ancestors through the prophets;
in these last days, he has spoken to us through the Son.
Do I choose to listen?
Pray: “Lord,
let me hear your voice!”
Practice: For motivation, ask if you want to
listen to the one:
whom God made heir of all things
through whom he created the universe,
who is the refulgence of his glory,
the very imprint of his being,
who sustains all things by his mighty word,
who accomplished purification from sins,
who took his seat at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Discuss: Do you have any reason not
to read the Bible?
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please leave your comments!