2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – 14 January 2023
I once chanced to see a rather striking sign outside a church. The text of the sign was simply, “Can you hear the voice of God in the silences of the day?” Can you hear the voice of God in the silences of the day?
I was particularly struck by it because often enough we expect to hear God in another way. We think God speaks to us in an exceptional way, or that he only speaks to exceptional people, and, sadly, we don’t include ourselves amongst them. So often we will hear people say, “God never speaks to me,” or the question behind this conclusion which is “Why does God never speak to me?” In other situations, people associate God’s voice with paranormal experiences, with the unusual. Or, without going as far as this, there can be a lingering expectation in us that I should hear God’s voice in the same manner that you hear my voice now.
Yet, God does not communicate to us in the same way that I am speaking to you now. This is because God is God, pure Spirit. And, therefore, God reveals himself to us not in the way that we might communicate to one another – through the sound of a voice – but rather through a different kind of sound, primarily through the sound of silence.
I often used to say to my students that if you wish to discover God’s will for you in the future, you must let go of the expectation of hearing a voice, because you will not hear a voice. No, you must look backwards. God’s will for us does not come to greet us from ahead of us, as a voice from another person might. Rather, God’s will is made manifest as we look back, and as we reflect and interpret our experiences of the past. In doing this we join the dots between our various memories, and the way forward becomes apparent, though never without the need for an election, or a choice, on our part which is always full of risk and always comes with the need for continuing validation. Discovering God’s will is driving forward through the rear-vision mirror is the best way to describe it.
This is why St. Benedict writing in the 6th century, and whose spirituality shaped my own monastic experience and spiritual life, squarely placed the priority on listening. He began his text for monastic life with the simple Latin word, “Ausculta!” which we translate in English as, “listen with the ear of your heart.” He was urging his followers to never give up on the practice of listening. Listen, listen. Listen to the whole of life – to the simple sights and sounds around you, to what is going on inside you – to your thoughts and feelings and impulses -to what is going on in your relationships, to what you have already experienced in your memory, to what is happening in the world around you. For this reason, Benedict taught his followers that they were to treat the utensils of the workshop with the same reverence as the sacred vessels of the altar. This is a truly remarkable suggestion. Benedict, in other words, was saying that nothing is too ordinary to reveal the presence of God, if we engage all that we do, and encounter all whom we come across with this kind of attentiveness.
Listen, question, interpret. Then, and only then will you know how to act. It is not easy to listen in this way. It is, in fact, very demanding. And that is why it is easier to abandon the responsibility of listening to life as it is, to abandon the responsibility of listening to simple reality, and hope, rather, in an illusory way that the answers to the questions of our hearts will be given in a dramatic, exceptional way – provided to us on a divine plate as it were.
All this speaks of what I call the sanctity of ordinariness. I think this is what the gospel today implies: the disciples encounter Jesus in what they are doing ordinarily. He invites them into companionship in a very ordinary way. The gospel does not speak of exceptional experiences, or of dramatic events. Rather, the life of God greets us in the ordinariness of the day. For genuine sanctity from a Christian perspective is, in fact, very ordinary.
It is, in fact, both ordinary and exceptional: ordinary in the way that it is developed, exceptional in its witness. It is manifest in the long-suffering fidelity of a parent to their children; it is manifest in the care of a child of their aged parent; it is manifest in the capacity of forgiveness between spouses; it is manifest in the undramatic, simple, unsolicited concern we express for one another. Yes, sanctity is as simple as a handshake and a smile. It is as simple as being on time. Whenever, we give of ourselves to another we are made holy, and those whose lives express a remarkable constancy of self-giving are the holiest ones amongst us. They are in this church as we speak. In the silences of our world, they, and not any kind of exceptional paranormal experience, are the very voice of God to us speaking to us with unmistakable clarity.
The disciples in today’s gospel see Jesus and hear his invitation to follow him in what they are doing ordinarily. They don’t miss the real opportunity for embarking on the journey of holiness when it presents itself. Likewise, may we not either so that the silences of our day might speak of the presence of God.
