"My Sheep Know My Voice"
Pastor’s Column
4th Sunday of Easter
April 17, 2016
“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life.”
John 10:27
Would you be able to recognize the Lord’s voice if he spoke to you? Even some of the disciples failed to recognize his voice in the resurrection accounts. But the Lord is not speaking of his physical voice, but the way he speaks in our lives, our world, the Scriptures, and our church. The stakes are very high: those who are able to hear his voice have eternal life. Jesus really has “spoken” to you this week. Did you recognize him?
If I am not reading the Bible every week (or every day!), or not really listening at Mass, I am going to miss what the Word of God has just for me. Every week on Sunday there is a message for our lives in those three Sunday readings. It may not be the reading mentioned in the sermon, either! So, if I am not listening to the word of God, I will not truly hear the Lord when he speaks.
The Lord also speaks in the coincidences of our lives. I often share personal stories or everyday experiences in which God spoke a word to me to share with you. We each have similar experiences in our own lives. Ask God each day to make you more sensitive to recognizing these daily moments.
We grow in sensitivity through our prayer life. The more we pray, the more sensitive we will grow in hearing God’s voice. In silence before the Blessed Sacrament, slowly reading the Scriptures, or praying the rosary, we tune our inner antenna to God’s wavelength.
In order to hear God, it matters how we live. Unrepentant sin can be a major obstacle to hearing God speak in our lives. One of the worst blockages in this respect results from holding onto unforgiveness toward someone.
We live in a world that frequently loses its way amid the often difficult moral choices of our time. The world at large cannot hear the Lord’s voice because it usually doesn’t want to hear what Christ has to say. Church teaching, especially the Catholic Catechism, represents the wisdom of 2000 years of experience. From these pages and in many other ways our Lord still speaks to anyone who truly wishes to hear his voice.
Father Gary
