Mitch Pacwa - How to Listen When God Is Speaking: A Guide for Modern-day Catholics

T he modern world is full of technical complexities. Every day we are presented with new and improved technology-and new challenges of learning how to use it. The problems of the world are even more complex. Why do oil prices fluctuate? Will there be enough money for Social Security and Medicare? How do citizens deal with terrorism, drugs, and international conflicts?

With all these complexities, it may seem like a quaint notion to look to our faith for answers. If I cannot even read the manuals for my cell phone or computer, how can I expect to find guidance from the Bible, which was written by people thousands of years ago? Furthermore, why would modern people want to listen to God speaking to them? What sense does this make in the modern world? Many Christians and unbelievers alike think it makes no sense at all. The Bible and a personal relationship with Jesus Christ seem so irrelevant that they dismiss a life of faith entirely. To them it seems that the Church is concerned only with their sexual morality. They prefer to make their own decisions, or at least to experiment with various options until they find what is right for them.

So the decision to listen to God speaking to us is a radicaland lifechanging-one. To have such a desire means that we believe that there is a loving God who cares for us and has a plan for our lives. Such a worldview differs from the secular culture in that our reference point is centered on loving and serving God, not on ourselves and what we can attain.

Believers in God do not look to powerful political leaders or rich and popular entertainment figures as their models. Rather, they look to Jesus Christ, not only as the model of their lives, but as the one who has the spiritual power to transform them into a new creation. That was our Father's intention from the very moment of creation. Instead of seeing human existence as an accident, believers accept that God desired to create the world for the sake of all humanity and to call each individual, without exception, to a unique purpose within history. This means that God created my soul and yours in our mothers' wombs to live precisely at the particular moment of history into which we were born. Now is the time for the mission God has chosen for each of us to fulfill. The choice to listen to God and do his will is the most noble, fulfilling, and purposeful thing we can do with our lives.

Listening to God in prayer will give us new and deeper insight into the person of Jesus Christ. As we meditate on his life in the gospels, as we understand the ways in which the Old Testament foretold and prefigured him, and as we gain insight into the meaning of Christ in the letters of the apostles, we will come to know Christ better. He will definitely challenge us. His words and actions in the gospels will challenge our instincts to be self-centered or to focus on our own personal pleasure or the acquisition of property and power. He will challenge those habits of sin that we too easily rationalize.

Instead of letting us slip into mediocrity, Jesus Christ commands us to be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48). Jesus will challenge our compulsive behaviors and ingrained patterns of wrongdoing and sin. We think that we can never change, and then we find that Jesus changes us the way he changed Matthew the tax collector (Matthew 9:9) or healed the blind man (Luke 18:35-43) or even raised Lazarus from the dead (John 11). Meditation on these actions of Jesus Christ can give us hope that he will raise us up from the death of our bad behaviors and give us new life. When we read about the leper who dared to ask Jesus for a healing (Matthew 8:1-4) or about the woman with the hemorrhage who was afraid to ask but who touched the tassel of Christ's garment and was healed (Mark 5:24-34), then we gain courage to ask Jesus to help us too. By listening to the gospel in prayer, we learn to become the woman who washed Jesus' feet with her tears and dried them with her hair; her great love saved her and her faith freed her from her sins (Luke 7:36-50). Learning to listen to these and other Scripture passages will change our lives into something far better than we could ever imagineeven better than the fantasies we entertain when we buy a lottery ticket and hope to win millions!

Yet listening to God is not as simple as listening to our MP3 players or cell phones. How do we even learn to listen to God? How does someone know whether God is speaking or whether they are hearing a little voice in their own heads? What is discernment of God's will? What are the basic principles of discernment? What are the goals and purposes of listening to God in the modern world? These are some of the questions this book seeks to answer.

Jesus taught on many different levels to the people of his time. He traveled throughout Galilee proclaiming, Repent and believe for the kingdom of God has come near (Mark 1:15). Then he called disciplesamong them the disciples of John the Baptist (John 1:29-51) and some fishermen at the Sea of Galilee (Matthew 4:18-22)to form a small group to follow him more closely throughout his earthly ministry. To these disciples he would address the Sermon on the Mount, although a large crowd also gathered around to hear him (Matthew 5:1-2). Throughout his public ministry, crowds listened to him teach in parables, yet he would explain privately to the smaller circle of disciples both the reason for speaking in parables (Matthew 13:10-17, 34-36) and the parables' interpretations (13:16-23, 36-43). The crowds were taught on one level, but deeper explanations and more profound teachings were given to the twelve disciples (John 13-17). Jesus' disciples learned to listen to this wisdom and then shared it with the world.

Today Jesus calls each one of us into that inner circle. He wants to share with us his profound wisdom and his love so that we, too, can share it with a needy world. Let's discover how we can become listeners like Jesus' disciples so that we can hear God in the modern world today, in whatever place or circumstance we find ourselves.