Homily - Sunday
Deacon David Lewis
Saint Charles Catholic Church, Imperial Beach / San Diego, CA
I once heard a guy call in to a
radio show. He had a unique gift… he could identify the make and model of a car
with surprising accuracy only by hearing the car horn. I hadn’t realized until
then that each car horn does make a fairly unique noise if you really know what
to listen for. Another woman that called in, she also had a unique talent: she
could listen to the tones of the telephone and tell you what number was being
pushed. Each number has a unique tone. I was thinking back if I have ever had a
similar gift, I it dawned on me. When I was training in the navy I learned
morse code, dah dah dit, morse code… as we were training, after learning the
basics, they would increase the speed a little faster each time, eventually we
would switch from the nice clean dits and dahs, and they would use live
signals. The live signals would be masked with static, voices, other
communication signals, and even other morse code in the background. It got to
the point where listening, or what we called copying morse code, became so
second nature that I could hear through all the noise and recognize the morse
code I was trying to write down, and if that wasn’t enough, I could lift one
side of my headset and carry on a conversation with the person seated next to
me. Training, readied us for the real world, where there are many
signals on the air waves, and we had to be able to read the one that was
important to the mission.
Each of these “gifts” if you will
require training, you are not born with an ability to identify car horns, you
can’t just immediately recognize the tones of a Phone, and I can speak from
experience that it wasn’t until I had trained months, hours per day, that I
achieved my proficiency in discerning the useful morse code from the other
noises.
In the same way when it comes to
recognizing God’s voice in our lives we need to train ourselves, we need to put
forth the effort to learn the subtleties to recognize what God is trying to
say, to hear him through the other static in our lives. To discern what is God’s
voice urging us to do his will, and what are the devil’s false noises drawing
us away from God. Our prayer life takes
practice, and through exercising our prayer life , it gets better and more
meaningful as we go on.
We
shouldn’t wait until we are in distress to pray to God. Our prayers shouldn’t start
out with “God I know it’s been a while” followed by requests for God’s
intercession into an unfortunate event in our lives: an accident, an illness,
or even worse…
Imagine
not talking to your loved one for weeks, and then picking up the phone only to
ask them to pick you up because you ran out of gas…
We
need to pick up the prayer phone and talk to God more often that ... God desires a
relationship with us.
You may not have a prayer life, and you’re thinking,
if Deacon only knew how uncomfortable I feel when I try to pray… well … God
does know how uncomfortable you may be, but I am sure he is comfortable,
absolutely comfortable with working with you through the training wheel phase
of your prayer life, if that is where you are at. You can ask those that have graduated up to
the ten speed stage of their prayer life, that just like riding a bike it got
much easier once they had done it a few times.
So when we pray, what should we do? First, our
prayer life is most successful when we can put ourselves in a quiet place, like
here among the quiet sanctity of the Church, right here in front of God in the
tabernacle, or at home in front of an altar of blessed objects of devotion, or
quietly in a chair in a room by yourself, or … even kneeling at your bedside
still works. We need to remove those things that normally distract us, so turn
off the cel phone, shut off the tv, turn off the computer, maybe let the family
know you wish to have no interruptions, or have even have them join you.
Second
be comfortable, if kneeling is hurting your knees, don’t kneel, if you are hot
open the door, turn on a fan, and get some ice water.
Then pray… there are lots of ways to
pray…
We can listen to the Word of God
through Scripture… one way is by using Lectio Divina, or divine reading, It is
just four steps: First, you grab your Bible, sit down and read a short passage.
You might want to try something from the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.,
or even the Sunday or Daily readings. After the first time reading it, meditate
on a short part of that, or even just a single word. Repeating it over and
over, letting it settle deep in your heart. Second: Be attentive to what touches your heart as you
sit and meditate on that phrase or word. Third: Respond, with a prayer of
praise, thanksgiving, or petition. Lastly, just be in the presence of God allowing
Him to speak to you in the silence of your prayer. Listening for God’s voice
We can also pray our traditional
prayers, the Our Father, the Rosary, Prayer of Saint Francis, The Prayer of St
Michael, or the Angelus … meditating… not just reciting… but allowing ourselves time
to digest the prayer, to examine these prayers word by word, pausing to think
over how we can live out the message of these prayers more fully. Listening for
God’s voice
And of course we can just sit down
and have a conversation with God. Talk to him like you are talking to a friend.
Think about all the things that you are grateful for, give God praise for being
your shepherd, give him thanks for all the graces and gifts in your life. And
then, if needed, ask for intercession in your life, His guidance, and his
blessings on those things in your life you are working through. And then listen
for God’s voice.
I’ll warn you now… you may not like
the answer, it may not be what you expect… you may pray for a way for God to
use the Church to bring you closer to your wife…. The next thing you know you
are contemplating five years of formation to be an Ordained Deacon… trust me! it
happens. Your prayers may even seem to go answered, in which case I will refer
you to the country legend Garth Brooks, and his song unanswered prayers, and
how in his high school years he prayed and prayed that God would make this
certain girl his mate… long story short, many years later he is at a high
school football game with his wife and runs into that old high school flame…
the way he remembered her just didn’t seem the same… Thank God for unanswered prayers.
One thing I have learned about
listening for God’s voice, is that when I get the answer I don’t want, when I
get a “no”, or we get a “maybe later”… it’s because God has something better in
store for us. God is a good shepherd, He does not want us to hunger or thirst.
He wants to lead us to springs of life-giving water, and wipe away the tears from
our eyes.
With practice we will learn His
voice, to pick it out from among the noises in our lives. God is speaking to us
in many ways, we need only to listen for God’s voice, and to follow where it
leads.
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