Dear Friends,
I am leaving this Sunday to go on my annual retreat which is only about six months late. Seems like life just got filled up with lots of things and there was never a full week that I could be away. But my spirit has been longing for a week of quiet, a week to be alone to listen to the voice of God. I will be making my retreat in Griswold, Iowa at the Creighton Retreat Center.
We are surrounded by many voices in this culture of ours. There’s rarely a moment in our waking lives that someone or something isn’t speaking to us and, even in our sleep, our dreams will demand our attention.
Each voice has its own particular tenor and message. Some voices invite us in, promising us life, while others threaten us. Some voices move us towards hatred and anger, while others challenge us towards love and forgiveness. Voices come at us on so many mediums now. We found quiet in the past if we simply left the house but now the voices follow us on our phones. We can tap into any source on the planet by simply Googling it. There are more talks, podcasts, videos, and discussions than we could ever listen to in our entire lifetime. Each one tells us that they are the important one.
Within all of these, which is the voice of God? How do we recognize God’s voice among and within all of these voices?
That’s not easy to answer. God, as scripture tell us, is the author of everything that’s good, whether it bears a religious label or not. Hence, God’s voice is inside of many things that are not explicitly connected to faith, just as God’s voice is also not in everything that masquerades as religious. But how do we discern that?
Jesus leaves us a wonderful image to work with when he tells us that he is the Good Shepherd, and his sheep recognize his voice among all the other voices. In sharing this image, Jesus is drawing upon a practice that was common among shepherds. At night, for protection and companionship, shepherds would put their flocks together into a common enclosure. They would then separate the sheep in the morning by using their voices. Each shepherd had trained his sheep to be attuned to his voice and his voice only. His sheep were so attuned to his voice that they would not follow the voice of another shepherd, even if that shepherd tried to trick them. Like a baby who will no longer be comforted by the voice of a babysitter but wants and needs the voice of Mom, each sheep recognized intimately the voice that was safeguarding him or her.
So, to know the voice of God we must be attuned to hearing God’s voice. We must listen to God’s voice in scripture, then when voices are talking to us we can readily say if it is an echo of what we heard in scripture. We must know the stories of the saints and their writings, so that when spirits nudge us in a direction, we can readily say if it is a pattern we have seen before in how God worked with the holy ones. We must spend time in quiet with God, so that when the gentle voice of God speaks, we are able to hear that voice.
Those are the things I hope to do on retreat this week. I promise I will keep you in my prayers throughout the week, please keep me in yours. Have a restful Labor Day.
Peace,
Fr. Damian