Christ Our Light Catholic Church - Loudonville, NY

From Ann McCauley

Second Sunday In Ordinary Time

In today’s first reading, the prophet Samuel is taken in by the priest Eli who raised him. It is a beautiful commentary on the development of call and response – how we learn to hear and how we learn to really hear.

The first two times God calls Samuel by name. Have you ever felt yourself addressed, named, honored, beheld and respected as you dialogue with God? Prayer is a dialogue with God that is always initiated from God. In the volley of prayer God speaks through our voices inside of us. Rather than waiting for visions, apparitions, manifestations or a glow in the dark, we are called to respect God’s voice within and to trust it.

The third time Samuel hears the voice, he realizes it’s God’s voice, that at first sounds like a human voice. Samuel responds, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.” Not every voice you hear is the voice of God. Here is the way you can tell. If the voice is filling you with self-pity, if the voice is making you judge and blame other people, and accuse other people, it’s not the voice of God. That is your voice. But if the voice is calling you into a more compassionate world, where you don’t put down people and disrespect them, then you know it is God’s voice.

When you can come with the same generous response, “Speak Lord, your servant is listening”, then the dialogue begins. Gradually the voice becomes more subtle, more compassionate, more loving, and broaden to include more people and more ideas of the world. If the voice is making you bigger, it’s the voice of God. If the voice is making you smaller and stingy and righteous, it is not the voice of God.

As with the saints who said that they prayed always, that inner voice of dialogue never stops. Samuel grew up and the Lord was with him and not one of God’s words ever fell to the earth without being heard. Let’s hope that at least somehow that can be true for us too.

~Taken from a podcast recorded by Fr. Richard Rohr.

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