5th Sunday in Ordinary Time: 2/7/16
Last Saturday evening right before the start of 5:00 PM Mass, I saw one of our women parishioners rummaging through our “lost and found” items, and I asked what she was looking for. She told me that her husband had lost part of his hearing aid system, a little controller for his hearing aids that allowed him to increase or decrease the volume of the sounds around him. In that way, he could lower the sensitivity of his hearing aids when there were a lot of sounds going on but also he could increase the sensitivity of his hearing aids when a speaker had a very soft voice. Well, despite all of that rummaging, she never found that little controller, but I did speak with her and her husband after Mass. He told me that he’s had a couple of types of hearing aids and that he liked his current ones the best because they allowed him to either increase or decrease their sensitivity. And he said that, not only did it allow him to lower their sensitivity when there were a lot of sounds going on and also allow him to increase the sensitivity of his hearing aids when a speaker was talking very softly, but he also admitted that he often turned those hearing aids down when he just didn’t want to listen to someone. (Just between you and me, I hope that that “someone” wasn’t at times his wife!)
Today’s Scripture readings are all about listening. In the first one, we hear of the Prophet Isaiah listening to the voice of the Lord who asks “Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?” and Isaiah responds “Here I am, send me!” In the second reading, we hear St. Paul saying, “I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received.” In other words, Paul is saying that “I spoke to you what the Lord first spoke to me” the beautiful words that “that Christ died for our sins…that he was buried; that he was raised on the third day…” and that he appeared to Peter, to the Twelve, to 500 brothers all at one, and lastly to him, “the least of the apostles,” and how he proclaims to the Corinthians a love that he has himself truly and totally experienced. Then in the Gospel, we find Peter, James, and John experience this great catch of fish and their listening to Jesus say to them, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men.” And it shows how they listened and accepted Jesus’ invitation to come and follow him.
This coming Wednesday, February 10, begins the season of Lent, and it’s a good time to check out our hearing. We each have been given a controller which we can use to either increase our ability to listen or to decrease our ability to listen. The question for us is how well are we listening to God? Isaiah listened. Paul listened. Peter, James, and John listened, and their lives were never the same again. The controller that we have received is our mind, our brain, and we can either use it to listen to the voice of God in our lives by means of Scripture or Church teaching or when God speaks to us through prayers or even though our experiences in life. But we can also use our minds to decrease the sensitivity of our hearing as we listen more to the voice of our culture, to the angry voices around us, to the values coming to us through the TV or through the Internet. Lent is an excellent time for us to get our hearing tested by developing a better ear for the call of the Lord, for the voice of the Lord, in our lives.
I happen to have here a visual reminder of what Lent should be all about. It’s this old logo from RCA-Victor records, the dog listening to this gramophone. In fact, it’s entitled “His Master’s Voice.” RCA’s point was that their recordings were so clear that this dog could recognize its master’s voice. This logo can be also our logo for Lent because Lent is a time for us to better recognize Our Master’s Voice.