Listen!
Be Still
...
and
Know Something of God!
Prayer
is the practice of listening to God.
Do
you have within you the desire to become a great lover of the Lord
Jesus Christ?
Do you want others to say of you, when you come to the end of your
life, "God must have loved her so much, she was such a loving woman!".
Then learn one of the great arts of loving — learn to
listen.
Listen, means to hear, to give ear too, and in a biblical sense,
it means to obey, because that which we hear from God, we should
then do and put into practise.
Listening to another is one of the great services of love: to be
willing to give another time and attention, to listen to what they
say, and to listen also to their silences, because that, too, can
teach us much.
When we listen to another, give them the time and opportunity to
verbalize their feelings, their ideas, their opinions, no matter
how haltingly or poorly delivered, we can learn so much about them
... and indeed about God.
A listening heart is a loving heart.
We all know that kind of situation where another presents us with
a statement, an opinion, and all too often we interject, do not
give them the chance to finish, or we show open disagreement before
even hearing what they are really attempting to say.
Or that communal situation where several people all talk on top
of one another, and no one is listening: all are concerned with
their own opinion and perspective. You may prove that you can dominate
the group, outwit them, out-speak them ... but have you learned
anything? Have you really tried to understand the perspective,
the cry of the other?
Have you met God in that situation, or have you celebrated
your own existence?
Patient listening, on the other hand – time given in love – has
the potential to bring a great deal of inner healing to another.
Listening can diffuse our own judgmental attitudes, because we may
well see and understand the other in a better light.
Listening is a sure way to Holiness, because the other becomes for
us the focus, we have to die to our own desire to be at the centre
of the stage, and rather allow the humanity of another to shine.
Sometimes we can be in a group and an individual may make what seems
to us an outrageous
statement, totally unrelated to the discussion, but if we allow
them to finish, we may often see their fears, their pain, and respond
in a way that would bring healing to them.
It is very important to learn and grow in the ability
to listen because it effects how we pray.
To the degree that we listen to others, so we will listen — or not
listen — to God, being drawn into the temptation of making our prayer
a monologue ...
Listen, to God, to life, to others, to the universe that surrounds
us ... listen and you will learn much of love and beauty.
So many times God calls us through his Word, Hear! Listen!
He wants our whole and undivided attention – which we also want
when we speak, and which we, in all love and humility — and
in turn — owe others ...
A Poor Clare Colettine Nun
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Totally Faithful to the Sacred Deposit of
Faith entrusted to the Holy See in Rome
“Scio
opera tua ... quia modicum habes virtutem, et servasti
verbum Meum, nec non negasti Nomen Meum”
“I
know your works ... that you have but little power,
and yet you have kept My word, and have not denied My
Name.”
(Apocalypse 3.8)
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