Listening For God

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.