January 17, 2021
Editor’s note: This reflection was originally posted to Fr. Mark-David’s Facebook page.
Does God talk to you?
How do you know?
How do you know God isn’t talking to you?
How do you know if it’s God you are hearing?
Of if you are hearing what you want to hear
And then blaming God for it?
These questions are not only of interest to psychiatrists
They pepper the Bible,
Which is full of messages from true and false gods.
In today’s passage we find the boy Samuel,
Who is already employed by God
As caretaker to the old, mostly blind priest, Eli.
Blissfully sleeping,
Samuel hears someone calling his name,
Thinking it is old Eli asking for this or that
He gets up, runs to Eli and asks what he wants.
What Eli wants is for Samuel to let him sleep,
So, he tells him to go back to his own bed.
This happens again, and then again.
Eli, by this time, fast awake
Realizes something else is going on,
And it is not about him.
It is about the boy.
Something is going on with Samuel,
We read:
“Then Eli understood that the Lord was calling the youth.
So he said to Samuel,
“Go to sleep, and if you are called, reply,
Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.”
Between God, Samuel and Eli,
Today I am interested in Eli
Not because he is a musty old priest like me,
But because, without Eli,
Samuel doesn’t know God is talking to him:
Talking about his life, what it is, what it is about.
If it weren’t for Eli,
Samuel wouldn’t know God is talking to him at all.
That is true for all of us I think,
We all need an Eli, a friend,
To help us listen to what ever it is God is saying to us.
We need an Eli, a friend
To let us know God is talking to us at all.
We need Eli, a friend,
To encourage us to listen to the voice we are hearing.
We can never really see ourselves
All we see is our reflection in a mirror––
A two-dimensional picture.
We all have some self-distortion.
None of us actually looks like, even our favorite selfie.
Even if we did,
That is not how God works, how God speaks to us.
God’s language is other people.
God is speaking to us all the time.
To know who we are,
What our life is, what our life is about
We need other people, our own troupe of Eli’s.
Eli does not tell Samuel what God is saying,
Eli does not have a plan, a vision for Samuel’s life
That he forces on him, or with which to tempt him.
The difference between Eli and the devil
Is that the devil tells us what we must be
What we should look like
How we should feel to fit
a preordained pathway of his making.
It is the devil who threatens us
With conforming or face damnation.
No, Eli is wise enough to know that whatever
God is saying to Samuel
That is between Samuel and God.
Eli cannot tell what God is saying to the boy.
Eli’s job, is to tell Samuel to listen
To what God is saying.
Eli’s job is to tell Samuel, God is calling.
A friend of mine writes:
“It is essential for us to understand life
as a time of visitation.
At every moment, we are being visited,
and our peace of heart, the strength of our hope,
depends on our ability to recognize this.
Friendship is to accept that God comes to visit us
through those that surround us.”
Faith, hope and love are always speaking to us.
But so too are doubt, despair and frustration.
Their voice is selfishness and self-loathing.
We all need Eli, to encourage us
To listen to the sound of faith, hope and love
That is God’s voice in our heart.
We need to be Eli for others.
We need to be Eli for the friend
Who cannot hear Love speaking.
We need to be Eli for those lives are only sounding
Discordant tones of doubt, despair, frustration.
We need to be Eli, encouraging others
To listen one more time
to the melody of mercy,
the lyrics of love of self and neighbor,
the rhythms of justice and peace.
We do not know what God is saying to another,
It is blasphemous to replace God’s voice with our own.
But we do know, as Jesus taught us,
God’s Love is music always playing
Hoping to resonate in every soul.
We can wait with someone
As they strain to hear God’s voice.
Amen.
Paulist Fr. Mark David Janus is president of Paulist Press.