Homily for
January 15, 2006
Liturgical Year
B-Cycle II
2nd Sunday in
Ordinary Time
by Fr. John Carney
Topic: Speak
Lord, Your Servant is Listening
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Samuel was sleeping in the
temple of the LORD where the ark of God was. The LORD called to Samuel,
who answered, "Here I am." Samuel ran to Eli and said, "Here I am. You
called me." "I did not call you," Eli said. "Go back to sleep." So he
went back to sleep. Again the LORD called Samuel, who rose and went to
Eli. "Here I am," he said. "You called me." But Eli answered, "I did
not call you, my son. Go back to sleep."
At that time Samuel was not familiar
with the LORD, because the LORD had not revealed anything to him as
yet. The LORD called Samuel again, for the third time. Getting up and
going to Eli, he said, "Here I am. You called me." Then Eli understood
that the LORD was calling the youth. So he said to Samuel, "Go to
sleep, and if you are called, reply, Speak, LORD, for your servant is
listening." When Samuel went to sleep in his place, the LORD came and
revealed his presence, calling out as before, "Samuel, Samuel!" Samuel
answered, "Speak, for your servant is listening."
Samuel grew up, and the LORD was with
him, not permitting any word of his to be without effect.
Brothers and sisters: The body is not
for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body; God
raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power.
Do you not know that your bodies are
members of Christ? But whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one Spirit
with him. Avoid immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside
the body, but the immoral person sins against his own body. Do you not
know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you,
whom you have from God, and that you
are not your own? For you have been purchased at a price. Therefore
glorify God in your body.
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Today,
in the first
reading, we heard a little bit about the story of Samuel.
Of course, there is a lot more
to that story and a little background makes it even more interesting
and
meaningful. Samuel was born of parents
Hannah and Elkannah. They were unable to
have children. Hannah went to the Temple and would pray and
pray to be blessed with a child. She
worked with the priest Eli. Finally, in
her old age, she became pregnant and had her son Samuel. As a
matter of fact, she knew that was going to
happen because Eli, the priest, had said to her that he had a vision
from God and
that "this time next year you will have a son."
So, like other stories, like other divine intervention births, such as
John the
Baptist and the great story of Jesus, in the case of Samuel, he to was
destined for
a very important mission. When he was
just a toddler, his mother brought him back to the temple and gave him
to the
priest Eli and said, "Here he is. He is God’s.
He is dedicated to the Lord." In
this reading we heard today, it is the beginning of his ministry. He
hears
three different times his name and he wakes up Eli and says, "What do
you want?" Eli tells him, go back to sleep. Then Eli
realizes that the Lord has finally called the young man. He said,
"Next time answer, 'Here I am Lord. I
come to do your will.'" That was the
beginning of the relationship between Samuel and the Lord and that was
to be a very
important relationship in the Scriptures.
Samuel was indeed a prophet. Although,
I read a commentary
that said that he wasn’t really a prophet.
But a prophet is one who speaks for God, so he was a prophet. If
he is not considered one of the Minor or
Major Prophets, he is a prophet because he spoke for God. It was
Samuel who challenged Saul to be a man
of God. It was Samuel who chewed out David after David had taken
Bathsheba for
himself and had her husband, Uriah killed.
It was Samuel who called David in and told him the Lord was disgusted
with
him.
Samuel had great courage. He
also had priestly
responsibilities. He was the one who selected, or should I say
that God selected
through him, David to be the King of Israel and it was Samuel who
anointed
him.
Samuel, throughout his entire
career in the Scriptures, is one who always listened well and did what
the Lord
asked. I think that’s the purpose of the
lesson this evening in the Scriptures.
Listen well to what God has to say to you and to act on God’s will for
you.
Listening is important.
We all know that. Some of us are
notoriously poor listeners. I don’t know
how many times in my life someone has said to me, "Carney, God gave you
two
ears and one mouth. Use them in that
proportion." It hasn’t really taken. It’s important to
listen. We know when God speaks to us, especially in
the Scriptures. You’ve heard in the second reading today that the body
is not
made for immorality. It is made for
God. It is a temple of the Holy
Spirit. That is God speaking through
Scripture.
God speaks for the
Magisterium, the teaching authority of the church, Peter and the
Apostles and
their descendants. We can be critical
of some Bishops, Lord knows, but thank God for the Bishops because the
Holy
Father and the Bishops speak to us today as Peter and the Apostles
spoke to the
early church. We listen to what they
have to say and we act upon it.
We can listen to God in prayer, if we
are
silent enough to hear His response. Many
of us, we listen to God through the knocks of life. Do you know
what I mean? Some of you do. Of course, we can listen to
God through each
other, from each other. The Bible tells
us in one of the readings that many of you had when you were
married, "Correct and admonish one another in Christ Jesus."
Correct and admonish one another. We are supposed to do
that. The Lord made this body of his, this Church,
a self-correcting mechanism. We are
supposed to have within us the ability to straighten each other out
when one of
us needs help in that area. Furthermore,
the Scriptures tell us that if you don’t warn your brother when he is
doing
wrong, God will hold you responsible.
But if you warn him and he continues to do wrong, then you will not be
held responsible. We have to listen,
and then we have to act on what we've heard.
Fr. William McNamara is an author and
he said this about
obedience, "Obedience comes from the
Latin oboedire and it means
"to listen." How many people really listen? To be obedient means that
we are so free of self-will, self-interest, and self-importance that we
really listen to all those messengers that God sends to tell us the
truth. In obedience we renounce a lot of the self-preoccupation and
look to the other, listen to the other. It's other-centered rather than
self-centered." One gets closer to God
through obedience than through prayer. I think that’s quite a
statement from that
great Spanish mystic.
Sometimes we don’t listen, and
sometimes we don’t listen or
obey. Sometimes, God is forced to shout
at us. Oftentimes in confession, a
mother, it’s always a mother, not the father, (men don’t go to
confession very often. I guess they don’t sin.) Anyway, in
confession, I hear, "I shouted at my children." I always
ask them, "Well, did they hear
you?" The Prophets shout at us. This morning, I was reading
the second chapter
of Jeremiah. Take 10 minutes and read the
second chapter of the prophet Jeremiah.
You talk about shouting at the people.
This is right before they are sold into captivity to the
Babylonians. They were making deals with the Egyptians, they were
worshipping false gods,
and what Jeremiah said, I would not repeat in the presence of
children. It’s tough stuff. He shouted at them.
Jeremiah further pointed out to the people
that God had spoken to them gently and they didn’t hear him. Now,
God speaks to you raising the decibel
level, and we’d better hear him. We are
like that. We are like children some
times; mom has to shout at us for us to hear.
We don’t like it, but we know we need it. It is true in the
family as well. Parents may patiently explain the dangers of
playing in traffic, but when their child is about to be struck by a
car, they
shout. A good doctor is very direct with
his patients. When they haven’t been
listening for a number of years, he will, in a way, shout at his
patients.
I think that
what I am trying to say is that
there is a God, and you are not Him. God tells us, "If you love
me, keep my commandments, listen
to me. Don’t be like a rebellious
child." Sometimes God shouts at us,
like the roar of the mighty lion. This
week I saw the Chronicles of Narnia. Did
any of you see it? It’s a C. S. Lewis
story and God is depicted as this mighty lion and the devil or evil,
the evil
queen, the White Queen, challenges the lion.
Then he ROARS. God does
that. Someone in the movie says, "Remember the lion is
not a tame lion." God is not a tame
God. He can roar, and He will because He
loves you that much. He roars at us in
Scripture, through the prophets, through the shepherds, through the
knocks of
our lives, and through each other. I don’t like it when God has to
shout at me
any more than you do. I have learned
that whenever God’s shouting, it’s because I haven’t been
listening. It is something that is very important that I
need to hear.
Speak Lord, your servant
is listening.