Your Servant is Listening

Third Sunday of the Year. Fr Robert Ombres considers the difference between overhearing and truly listening.

Imagine going to a park to sit on the grass during a lovely summer afternoon, and scattered around you are various small groups of people chatting. You hear the conversation of some people sitting behind you. Well, do you in fact hear them? It would be more accurate to say you overhear them, because you can only hear a conversation when you are part of it. Otherwise, you overhear. But if someone in the group behind you recognises you and calls you over to join them, then you will hear the conversation because you will be part of it as you are part of the group. You will respond, contribute, share. You are now involved and committed.

Today’s gospel is about talking and hearing. A group, including Jesus, is gathered in the Nazareth synagogue on the sabbath for worship, prayer and readings from the scriptures. Those present belong and are involved; all eyes are fixed on Jesus. They are hearers not overhearers. The gospel concludes with Jesus remarking on how the text he has just read from Isaiah was being fulfilled that day even as they listened.

We, the baptised, are each in our in our own way to be hearers of the word and to draw others to share Christ’s life and words. So they too become hearers of the word, and we servants of that word, as St Luke tells Theophilus in the opening of today’s gospel. With striking words, Vatican II stated that all the Church’s preaching, no less than the whole christian religion, ought to be nourished and ruled by holy scripture. ‘In the sacred books the Father who is in heaven comes lovingly to meet his children and talks with them.’ Our eyes are to be ‘fixed’ on Jesus Christ so as to realise that the word of God took flesh in Jesus, the Son of God, the incarnate word of God. The scriptures were being fulfilled.

We acknowledge the scriptures to be inspired, and St Luke tells us that Jesus returned to Galilee with the power of the Spirit and taught in their synagogues. Indeed, the text from Isaiah read out by Jesus, begins, ‘the spirit of the Lord has been given to me, for he has anointed me’.

We need to approach the word of God, then, in both its meanings, with the appropriate reverence and attentiveness. As for the written word of God, at Mass this will happen formally and collectively, though here too when it comes to reading the texts there are different ways of doing so. It was remembered about St John Henry Newman that his manner of reading the gospel was different. The marked thing, which was hard to describe, was the increase in reverence in the voice which culminated when he came to the words of our Saviour. Before and after these words there was a kind of hush.

Such reverence and attentiveness should also find expression when we read the bible in more private settings. There are graphic descriptions of St Dominic recollecting himself and fixing himself in the presence of God. When reading certain books on his own, St Dominic would venerate them and bow to them and sometimes kiss them, particularly if it was a book of the gospels or if he was reading the words which Christ had spoken with his own lips.

I learnt the value of this kind of reverence, unexpectedly, many years ago whilst talking with a Muslim friend. As part of our conversation, I took down a bible, read from it, and put it down on the floor near the armchair I was sitting on. My friend immediately rose, picked up the bible, and gave it to me saying that I had obviously put it on the floor without thinking. Since then I have never put the bible on the floor, and when I place the bible on my desk to read it I never put anything on it, not even a pen or sheet of paper.

Like Samuel, we should say: ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’

Readings: Nehemiah 8:2-6,8-10 | 1 Corinthians 12:12-30 | Luke 1:1-4,4:14-21

Image: detail of an icon of Christ reading from Isaiah in the synagogue, from Ted (CC BY-NC 2.0)