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I would
like to talk to you tonight about
the first reading from one of the historical books of the Bible, from
the 1st book of Samuel. Samuel
was a great prophet. We remember him
most notably when he anointed David. You
know the story. God sent Samuel to
select one of Jesse’s sons to be the king of Israel and Samuel finally
selected
David. Then he kept David straight and
he held him accountable. Samuel was a
prophet with tremendous courage and tremendous wisdom.
Truly, he was one of the great prophets.
Samuel’s beginnings were very
interesting as well. His father was
Elkanah and his mother was Hannah. Prior
to his birth, his mother was barren.
Elkanah had another wife who gave him several children but he
preferred Hannah.
She was his favorite and she was barren.
Hannah went to the temple in Shiloh to
pray. While praying, her lips were
moving but no sound was heard and the priest that was there, Eli,
accused her
of being drunk. Basically, he said, “Shame on you, in the temple, here in Shiloh,
drunk.” And she said, “No, I was just praying.”
She told the priest Eli, “I’m praying that God will bless me
with a
child, with a son”. Eli said, “May God’s
will be done and may you have a son”. A
short time after that, she conceived. Prior
to the conception, she promised that if God blessed her with a child,
that
child would be dedicated to God’s service from his infancy on and all
his life would
be to do God’s will. She conceived and
bore a son. When he was weaned, which at that time was about the age of
3, she brought
him to the temple, offered sacrifice and gave her son to the priest in
the
temple where he stayed and lived.
Interestingly, even today,
that is a common occurrence among Buddhist. Some
places in Asia, when you go to the
Buddhist Temples, you see little boys there.
They are given by their parents for service in the temple so
that they can
learn the liturgy, etc. Its considered a great honor for the family. Now, if my mother could have gotten rid of me
at age 3, she would probably have done it. She
had to wait until I was 40-something to get me ordained.
As the scripture tells us,
Samuel pleased God and everything he did was anointed and was done
well. He was a great prophet.
However, I want to focus on
the part of the scripture, in this very familiar story, where Samuel
hears God
calling him and he doesn’t know what it is he is hearing.
He goes to Eli three times. Eli
finally realizes it’s God calling Samuel
and that Samuel is being called to prophecy, the beginning of his
ministry. Finally, Eli says, “Look son, go
back to bed
and if you are awakened then say, “Speak Lord, your servant is
listening.” Samuel did listen and he did
follow most
perfectly the Lord’s guidance in his life.
We also need to listen
because God loves us as much as he loves Samuel. Although,
many of us are not called to
greatness, we are called in our vocation to live it as genuinely and
righteously as Samuel lived his vocation.
This is true regardless of the vocation that you have chosen and
God has
blessed you with in your life.
We need to live our vocations
fully. We need to listen to God and we
need to know his voice in our lives. We
need to follow him.
How can we listen to Him if
we can’t hear Him? How can we hear God
unless we turn off the TV or we turn down the noise that we live with
today? We are surrounded with noise. Sometimes, I visit people in the hospital and
the TV is blaring. They don’t even think
to shut if off. I just go in there and I
shut it off and I say, “That things going off.
We need to talk here.” Some of us
wake up to a radio alarm. Some people
leave the radio or TV on all day. Some
of you even watch that rubbish during the daytime on TV all day long. Stop that!
You are better off praying or something.
Noise, Noise, Noise.
I was in New York City several
months ago. I love to ride in the subways.
It’s like theater on wheels. Everyone has an I-pod and they’re not
meditating—its just noise. I prefer the
noise of a train to whatever they are listening to.
What I am saying, you know is
true. Noise. We’re surrounded by noise. When are we going to hear the voice of God?
This is a problem that is
recognized in the secular world--this milieu of noise in which we live. I was reading an article in Psychology Today
by
psychologist Hara Marano. She says that
because
of the noise in our lives that we’re surrounded with, we feel
overloaded. We overreact to minor
annoyances and we feel
like we can never catch up. Does that
sound familiar? A little bit? Even people who are retired are busy, busy—“No
time. No time to say hello, goodbye. I’m
late.” Marano says that we need to
maintain some semblance of balance. We
need some sense that we are steering the ship of our life. She says that we need solitude
Mind you, this is a secular
psychologist talking about mental health
Solitude is refreshing, an opportunity to renew ourselves. In other words, it replenishes us. We all need periods of solitude. Solitude
gives us a chance to regain
perspective. It renews us for the
challenges of life. Solitude restores
body and mind.
Jesus Christ, the Son of the
living God, needed solitude.
If you read the Gospels, you
notice he’s always running away, getting away from people.
Sometimes, he goes to the
other shore and sometimes they are there waiting for him. He goes up the mountain. He
goes in the Garden before he suffers and
dies. He gets away especially before he
makes big decisions. Before he chose the
12, he went up the mountain to pray.
If Jesus needed solitude and quiet,
then how much more do we need solitude and quiet if we are to hear Gods
voice
in our hearts? We need it for mental
health and we especially need it for spiritual health. I
know you agree with me on this. What I’m
saying, everyone is saying, “Yes that’s’
right. There is too much noise.”
The question is:
“What are you going to do
about it?”
Now, I realize that this is a
dangerous topic for me to speak about. I’ve
got it made in this area. I live by
myself. I know, I have no adult
supervision and it is marvelous. You’ve
given me a beautiful house to live in. I
have a chapel in my house. I keep the Blessed Sacrament in the rectory
and it’s
easy for me to get away from the noise. But
it’s not so easy for you, especially those of you who are parents and
have
young children. However, God blesses you
because kids sleep about 12 hours a day, so you can have some quiet
time. The
reason they need the sleep is because you need sanity.
That being said, it’s
difficult but you have to do something about all the noise in your
life. You need to take the time to seek
solitude and
quiet everyday, so that you can pray and commune with the God that
loves you.
We are blessed to have this Chapel
here at IHM and at St. Joseph’s in White Rock.
You know the secret combination is 1, 3, 4.
You can come here at anytime, day or night.
Every once in awhile, someone will say, “I
spent most of the night in the chapel. My
heart is heavy and I’m worried, I’m having difficulties and I spent
most of the
night in the chapel…and I’m better now Father.
I still have the problems but I’m o.k. and I’m going to work
through
this. I’ll be o.k..” We
need that time to be alone and we need
that time to talk to God. Some people
during
their lunch, steal part of that hour to take a walk so that they can be
alone
with God and pray.
Another good thing is to go on a
retreat. I have a good friend, an old
army buddy that I saw recently. He said,
“I want to thank you for sending me on a retreat in 1983.”
He was having many problems--many family
difficulties. I called a Jesuit retreat
house in eastern Maryland. I paid for
the retreat and I made him go. I just
nagged my buddy until he went. He came
back a changed man. He spent a weekend
in solitude and in quiet. He was able to
sort things out because he finally had the time and the quiet in which
to
think. Go on a retreat. We have several
retreat houses in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe.
We need peaceful silence, we
need attentive listening, and we need holy reading.
St Augustine said, “When
you read, God speaks to you and when
you pray, you speak to God”. There are
wonderful
books to read, many written by our saints, the mystics of our church
but there
are many books of contemporary theology that are inspirational. Pope Benedict, our Holy Father, is quite
prolific and he puts out about a book a month.
His works, of course, are very good.
And then, of course, there is prayer.
“Prayer is spiritual
breathing. Prayer reveals to souls the
vanity of earthly goods and pleasures. It
fills souls with light, strength, and consolation and gives them
foretaste of
the calm bliss of heaven.” St. Rose of
Viterbo.
I’m going to stop now and ask
you for the next few minutes, to think about the week ahead. What can you do in this week to make that
special effort to find that time, that time of solitude and quiet, so
that you
can be closer to God and listen to His word.
Speak Lord, your servant is
listening.