A newly ordained deacon was sent to work as an assistant to an older priest. The young deacon went to the older priest for some orientation and advice. “How long should I preach?” The older man answered preach for about seven minutes.
Sometimes I have heard I should make my homilies as short as possible because the people do not have much time. Mostly I have not complied.
I wonder when I observe that people can attend a lengthy concert or movie for two or three hours. “How come people can sit in one place for two or three hours or more and watch a good movie or listen with joy to choral music but they cannot do the same when it comes to listening to the word of God at church?” I have no answer to that question.
But I think I got my answer after reading a book on listening. In the book the question of why people do not hear the word of God was addressed. What I read was very enlightening.
People need personal experiences to listen completely. People need to have a personal experience of God in their lives before they can hear the word of God with joy. To proclaim the word of God to people who do not know God in a personal way and who do not have a personal relationship with God is like reading poetry to people who do not know what poetry is all about. They get bored very easily and are in a hurry to leave.
How can people move from a situation of being bored by the word of God to a situation of joy and enthusiasm in hearing the word of God? Jesus says, “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother.” You have made the listening a personal thing.
As we read in Psalms, “Oh that today you would hear his voice: harden not your hearts as at Meribah, as in the day of Massah, in the desert.”
In the book we find three steps necessary to transform from lukewarmness to enthusiasm in the faith. The three steps are go into the desert, the word of God comes to us, and leave the desert and go about proclaiming love to your neighbor. We must pass through these three stages to arrive at the stage where we begin to live the life of faith.
Stage 1 – We go into the desert. The desert is a place of being alone with God. We go into the desert when we take time off our normal job and household occupation to be with God in church, in prayer, in reading the word of God. The desert is the place where we encounter God. We must take the first step to go into the desert, to reach out to God, to look for God. To listen intently for God to speak to us.
Stage 2 – The word of God comes to us. Once we open our hearts to God in the desert, God Himself comes and fills us up. A saint once said that when we take one step to God, God takes two steps to us. At this stage God takes the initiative to come to us, to fill us, to renew us, to transform us, to remold us into God’s image that we are created to be. This is the stage that some people call being born again. When this happens to us we would like to spend the whole day alone with God in church, in prayer, in Bible reading. But like the reading from Ezekiel we must go on to live our lives and carry out our duties in the family and in the society, to watch for evil.
Stage 3 – We go about proclaiming the faith. Having experienced the goodness of the Lord in our own lives, our next desire is to share this experience with others. The experience of God is like the experience of love. You can tell people about it but they will not understand what you are talking about until they themselves experience it.
In a prayer we say, “God our Father, you redeem us and make us your children in Christ. Look upon us, give us true freedom and bring us to the inheritance you promised.”
In order for this to happen, we must resolve to take the first step, to make room for God, make time for church, for prayer, for hearing the word of God.
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month our contributor is Deacon Peter Mueller of St. John’s Catholic Church in Grand Marais.
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