Wednesday of the 1st
Week in Ordinary Time
January 15, 2014 6:30am
Samuel’s words in the first
reading really catch my attention this morning.
“Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”
The wise old priest Eli advised
Samuel to say this, and Samuel followed the advice.
In our culture, we place a lot of
value on talking and doing.
We are inclined to assert
ourselves and also to feel that we are wasting time if we are not doing
something.
One result is that we leave
little space in our inner life for listening.
In this context, the words that
Eli advises can be taken as a model for our attitude before God.
To imagine that our thinking,
talking, planning and doing are all that counts is a very limited approach to
life.
Too often life consists of
headlong movement supported by very little reflection.
The truth is that our mind and
will need to stop at times and allow God to be heard and make an impression on
us.
Listening doesn’t mean that we
can expect to hear a divine voice.
It does mean that we are open to
the much more subtle influence of God that comes when we pray and are quiet.
We need to be quiet to understand
what the world around us and what our family and friends are saying to us.
Even in today’s gospel, we see
Jesus going off by himself to a lonely place just to be quiet and pray.
So even the Son of God in his
ministry realizes that there must be some silence in order for him to hear and
stay attuned to the Father.
I suggest then that every day we
reserve some time when we put aside the noise of the world around us and even
the chatter of our own minds and hearts.
Every day we reserve some time
just to say, “Speak, Lord, for your
servant is listening.”
