The listener’s duty

THERE’S a passage in St. Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians that reminds us of the listener’s duty in any process of communication. This, to me, is crucial at the moment, since we seem to lose the proper sense of listening. We prefer to be on our own, with our own ideas, our own world. We are self-absorbed.

“When you heard and received from us the word of God, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but, as it truly is, the word of God.” (2,13)

The whole burden of responsibility in any communication does not lie solely on the speaker. A lot also depends on the listener. No amount of good quality of a speaker can guarantee success in any communication if the listener does not do his part.

In fact, if the listener is good, the speaker can be bad and still the communication can attain its goal. We need to pay greater attention to training ourselves to be good listeners. It seems this is largely neglected.

In some clergy gathering I attended, for example, I get the impression that listening is not done properly. In spite of the regularity of the activity—a monthly affair—I notice that there’s always a new speaker, with new ideas, with new gimmicks, etc.

I understand that we need to know new things, and to be entertained also as we listen. The problem is that we seem to get stuck in that level. We hardly move forward to really fathom the spiritual and supernatural content of the message made.

In the gospel about the Good Shepherd (Jn 10), Christ defines the sheep that belongs to him as the one who listens to him. “My sheep listen to my voice. I know them, and they follow me.”

All of us actually belong to him, because all of us come from him. We are his creatures, the masterpiece of his creation. But our belongingness to him also depends on us, on whether we choose to belong to him, to listen to him and follow him.

Otherwise, we will nullify the original design God has for us. We are capable of doing that, because of our intelligence and will, because of our freedom. Paraphrasing St. Augustine, we can say that God may have created us without us, but he cannot save us without us. We need to do our part to go to him, to belong to him and follow him.

Listening to God’s word is not a completely passive affair. It also requires a very active effort. That’s why St. James, for example, told us not only to be hearers of the word of God, but also doers.

We have to look for it, love it, and act on it. We have to understand that in the end it’s God’s word that contains all the wisdom of the world. Our sciences, our arts, our philosophies and ideologies should spring from it and lead toward it. We have to convince ourselves that they can only have true life if they are inspired by God’s word.

Obviously, the great challenge is how to discover and articulate the connection between God’s word and our human sciences. This area of concern is barely worked out, even if a good amount of effort has already been made in this direction.

Alas, nowadays, many people have arrived at the point of questioning and rejecting the role of the word of God in our pursuit for knowledge and wisdom. It seems the world is fiercely defiant of God. They are rationalizing abominable immoralities like abortion and so-called reproductive health that are fully against God’s commandments.

We have to recover our proper bearing and start to make appropriate effort to listen more intently, more actively to the word of God. Reading the Gospel and meditating on it should be a habit that should lead us to enter into intimate relationship with Christ.

We need to internalize God’s word, to the point that they become our own, and the abiding light in everything that we do. We have to outgrow the wrong notion that only a few people are meant to take God’s word seriously. God’s word is meant for everyone of us.

That’s why, we should also realize that we have to help one another to develop a burning love for the word of God. In this regard, we should not remain in the amateur level. We have to go professional and real experts in handling and transmitting the word of God to others.