Weekly HOMILY for July 10, 2011: Faith, Humility and Openness: Keys to Listening to God and Others

15th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle A
St. Mark Church, Fallston
July 10, 2011

Faith, Humility and Openness: Keys to Listening to God and Others
By (Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P. Amato


A PROBLEM: LISTENING

Every day we interact with one another, it becomes clearer that our culture has a real problem with listening. There’s a reason for this.

When my father and mother were teaching my brother, sister, and me good manners, they taught us never to interrupt others when they are speaking. They taught us to listen and wait to speak until the other person was finished.

From that lesson learned, my experience is that folks are constantly interrupting each other when someone is speaking. You can also see this on news shows and talk shows that are modeling this as normative behavior to the general public.

We interrupt and do not listen, of if we listen we’re thinking about our response before the person has completed their thought. So often, our response is here (hand high) and what the person said is here. (Hand low; and two missing each other)

Still another lesson preached and learned at home was, “God gave you two ears and one mouth. Listen twice as much as you speak”

Some of us are two mouths and half an ear. It is no wonder that we’re not communicating!


SOIL TYPES AND LISTENING

Today’s Gospel parable raises this issue of listening beautifully.

The metaphor is clear: the sower or farmer is God or Jesus. The seed is the Word of God.

The soil represents you and me and the different ways we receive or listen to the Word of God. The question is: How do we listen? Which of the four soils are we?

Each tells us how well we listen. I want to propose three requirements that are needed for effective listening, whether it is listening to the Word of God or listening to one another.


LISTENING TO THE WORD

For listening to the Word of God, FIRST WE NEED FAITH. Faith means that we believe that this is really the Word of God himself as it’s entering our very ears.

We believe that the Word who is God really speaks to us in and through the Scripture. We believe that the Word or Son of God is really present in the inspired Word as it is proclaimed here at Mass or as we read it privately.

SECOND, WE NEED HUMILITY. Humility means that we are aware that we are incomplete, that we are imperfect, that we don’t have it all.

We are aware that we desire and yearn, at least deep down, for completeness, for something beyond ourselves. We yearn for God, for a divine communication, for transcendence.

And THIRD, WE NEED OPENNESS. Openness means that we are awake and alert to the present moment.

It means that we want to take in what is said, that we are willing to have our attitudes, outlooks, feelings, behavior, and relationships changed, changed because of the Word we are listening to.

Imagine the kind of transformation that sort of listening can bring you!


LISTENING TO ONE ANOTHER

Now these same three traits are also essential for listening to one another.

FIRST, WE AGAIN NEED FAITH. Here faith means seeing the other person as made in the image and likeness of God and worthy to be listened to.

It means seeing others as in their own unique way revealing God to us, seeing others as valuable, worthwhile, with something to share with us.

SECOND, WE AGAIN NEED HUMILITY. Here humility means that we see ourselves as one with, as bonded with, others on the same human journey. We’re in this together and can’t make it alone!

It means that we do not see ourselves as above or better than others, that we see ourselves and others as having similar wants and needs, similar challenges and hopes.

AND THIRD, WE AGAIN NEED OPENNESS. Openness means that we are willing to take in the experience of others and not just hold on to my own experience as normative.

We are willing to ask and try to enter into the life of others and not just talk about ourselves all the time.

We’re even willing to have our attitudes, outlooks, feelings, behavior, and relationships changed, changed because of our listening to others.


CONCLUSION

So, these three traits – faith, humility, and openness – help us to be good listeners – listeners to the Word of God and to one another.

These traits, with the listening that results, might just help to ease and even resolve some of the problems in our communications with each other.