Listening For God
Author: Fr. Michael Byron December 31, 2021
As happens sometimes in reading
the gospels, we are left with some perplexing questions after reading the
stories. For example, in this account of
St. Luke of the visit of the shepherds to the manger in Bethlehem, we hear that
they encountered Mary, Joseph, and Jesus. At the same time, we are also told that after the shepherds made known
the message of the angel about this newborn king, “all who heard it were
amazed.” Well who are these “all” who
heard it? Mary would not have been
amazed; the infant would not have been amazed. Mary had already been told in advance about her son’s birth and her
son’s destiny. Was there a crowded
audience at the manger? We have no
evidence of that.
And why were the shepherds so
overjoyed on their way back home, “glorifying God for all they had seen and
heard”? They had been told they’d find a
baby in a manger, and that’s just what they found – a baby in a manger. That may be a nice coincidence, but there
really wasn’t much more to see, at least not the way the gospel tells us. That newborn could have been anybody, and
more likely a nobody – given the circumstances of his birth. So why all the excitement? It was because they had heard the promise of
God through the voice of an angel, just as Mary had, and they had believed
it. But how did they know that it was God’s voice, rather than just the loudest voice?
All of us hear incessant voices, voices coming to us every day, usually with a product to sell or a
political agenda to promote, or even a religious program to impose upon
us. So who is to be believed?
Today I hope Mary might help us
with the answers to questions like that. The gospels tell us that she “kept all these things, reflecting upon
them in her heart.” Mary was not
impulsive, she was not quick to react to the amazing – sometimes almost
preposterous things that god was inviting her to become involved with, like:
-
become the Virgin Mother of the Savior of the World
or -
give birth in an animal barn in the middle of nowhere
or - flee as a refugee to a foreign land after her child was born
or -
sit at the foot of the cross to watch her only son be executed.
She and we can only say yes to
such strange requests, such strange invitations, and yes, such strange demands
when we are really, really sure that it is actually God who is speaking, and
not just some person with a megaphone or a group with a slick presentation or
the latest social movement. So how can
we know that it’s really God? How can we
trust? It’s all about relationship. And that doesn’t happen in a moment. Relationship is rooted in long-term
engagement – or as Pope Francis likes to say it, encounter – with the one whom
we seek to know and to love and to serve.
“And Mary kept all these things,
reflecting on them in her heart.” Relationships are not created in a moment, nor do they come about without
being tested. And in the case of God,
relationship is not ever a radically private endeavor. It is deeply personal, but it requires
community in order to be proven real. Mary obviously had a deep inner life, “where she kept all these things,”
but she was never a solitary person. This allowed her to be wise and discerning of the real voice of God when
she heard it. It enabled her to continue
to say yes to things that involved hardship and bewilderment. She is our teacher that way. And so as we honor her today, let us commit
to being her students.
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