Our gospel for today tells us that: “Mary . . . sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying.” Picture that scene for a moment. Now imagine it is you sitting there at the feet of Christ Jesus. Hear him call you by name. Listen to his words; let his voice soak into your heart. What is he saying to you? That is the Ignatian way of praying with scripture, picturing ourselves in the scene and discovering what the scripture has to say to us today. The Divine can use our God-given imagination to speak to us if we open ourselves to the possibility. If, on the other hand, we close the ears of our hearts to all the ways the Holy One may use to reach out to us, we are choosing the famine “of hearing the words of the Lord,” that the prophet Amos warned about in our first lesson.

Some years ago, I came across a journaling technique to listen and hear the Word of the Lord. It was in a book the title of which I no longer remember, nor do I remember the author, but I have found the process to be a profound blessing. It takes just ten minutes, but one has to use it every day for a month or more to get in the habit of listening. You just open your journal and write whatever you hear for ten minutes. The author said the first time he tried it, what he heard was his grocery list, his “to-do” list. When he complained to his spiritual director, the director told him he was tuned into the wrong station. So we do have to tune into the Divine, to let God know, however we might prayerfully do that as we center down, that we are listening for that “still, small voice of God”. It helps to be expectant, to realize that the Beloved always desires to get our attention, and to trust that the Holy One will reward any opening we provide. Try it for yourself and see what happens.

We might think listening and hearing are the same thing, but the word “hear” comes from the word that means “to obey.” Listening then seems to relate more to the process of paying attention to what’s coming in and hearing more to what we do with the word we get. For sure, the more we follow through on what we hear, the more God’s Word will resound in our hearts and minds day by day.