“How does God speak to you?” It’s a question I get asked a lot, especially when talking about my discernment to become a priest. “How did you know, Father, that God was calling you to be a priest? Did you hear a voice?” We want to know how God communicates to us, to see if He is communicating with us.
We have three paradigms for divine communication in today’s readings. I usually work towards the Gospel in preaching, but this time I’m going to go from the Gospel to the first reading. And each reading contains ways that God communicates to us.
In our Gospel, Jesus speaks to the disciples in the boat, as I am speaking to you. But whereas many of us probably think that if God were to speak to us, we would clearly understand what He was saying and do whatever He asked, this isn’t true with the disciples. They have been with Jesus for some time, hearing Him preach, watching Him heal the sick and possessed. And yet, when Jesus appears, walking on the sea, they figure that it’s a ghost. They do not recognize Jesus. Peter, to ascertain Jesus’ identity, asks Jesus to command Peter to walk on water. And when St. Peter does, but then falters, it is Jesus who picks him up and helps him back into the boat. In this way, we see two ways that Jesus speaks to us: in the first way, He speaks to us in the same way that I am speaking with you now, so that we can hear His voice. But what is surprising is that, just like the disciples, we don’t always recognize the voice of Jesus even when it’s a voice. Secondly, Jesus speaks through His care for the disciples. When Jesus rescues Peter from drowning, He is communicating through His actions that He will never allow Peter to sink amidst the crashing waves. We see in this the foreshadowing of Jesus’ protection of His Church, sometimes referred to as the Barque or Boat of Peter, which is not allowed to sink in the storms of world events.
The second paradigm is in St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. St. Paul says, “I speak the truth in Christ, I do not lie.” God speaks to us through His apostles, those whom Jesus called and sent out to build up and oversee the Church. The bishops, as successors to the apostles, when speaking on matters of faith or morals speak “the truth in Christ.” To them is given the charism, when they are united to the Pope, to teach what belongs to the faith infallibly. Just as St. Paul says elsewhere, “It is not longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me,” the bishops are given the grace to teach, not by their own authority, but with the authority of Christ on matters of faith and morals. If we want to hear God speaking about what we must believe, and how we must live to as to be faithful to Christ, we can look to the bishops, the successors of the apostles, to hear the voice of God.
The last paradigm from our readings comes from the first reading, and is a very powerful way that God communicates. We hear the inspired author tell us that Elijah, the greatest prophet in all the Old Testament, did not hear God in the heavy winds, nor the earthquake, nor the fire. No, Elijah heard the voice of God in the whisper heard in the silence. This voice was so powerful, that Elijah, who had called down fire from the heavens to consume the oblation, offered to the true God to shame the prophets of Baal, had to hide his face because He heard God in the silence.
Silence is a very powerful expression of God’s voice. It is in silence that the great things of God happen. When God created the universe, He did so in silence. In the silence of meditation, according to most artistic renditions, Mary heard the Archangel Gabriel tell her that God had called her to be the Mother of the Son of God. And in the silence of the night, the Word-Made-Flesh came to be known by us as He was born in Bethlehem. In fact, in the extraordinary form of the Mass, what some call the Tridentine Mass, part of the Liturgy includes a prophecy from the Book of Wisdom about the Incarnation. Romano Guardini quotes it in The Lord, his meditation on the life of Christ: “‘For while all things were in quiet silence and the night was in the midst of her course, thy almighty word leapt down from heaven from thy royal throne.’” Likewise, the Resurrection happens in the silence of the early morning, when the guards are asleep and no one expects Christ to rise from the dead.
In our days, however, we manage to cut out as much silence as possible. Are we afraid of being alone with God? Are we afraid of what God would say? The answer is probably as diverse as the number of people here. I bet that if I remained silent for a long period of time during the Mass, we would try to find ways to break the silence: thumbing through hymnal pages, reading the bulletin, looking around to others. But we need silence. My practice is to always give up the radio and music during Lent so as to allow more time for God to speak to me in His power. But we don’t just need silence in Lent. We need it all throughout the year.
We’re taught in seminary that every homily (at least the good ones) should have a practical way to apply the readings to life. Today we’ll apply this teaching by taking some extended time of silence, first after my homily, and then after the reception of Holy Communion. Listen to God during this time. Don’t just make it a time of doing nothing, but make it a time of active listening to the whisper of God, heard only in the silence.
