I Have Heard You Calling in the Night: Listening for the Lord's VoiceIn the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today’s readings set before us accounts of what was called in Latin, vocatio, or vocation: the Lord’s call in the life of the believer.
In the Old Testament lesson we read about the call of the boy Samuel, who would grow up to become the first great prophet of Israel, and who would anoint Israel’s first kings, Saul and David.
The passage begins by saying that “the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. And the word of the Lord was rare in those days; and there was no frequent vision.” And we learn that even the old priest’s, Eli’s, “eyesight had begun to grow dim.”
The lesson to be drawn from this passage is that even when you find yourself in a time of desolation or spiritual draught, it is important to serve the Lord anyway.
I often think that we are in such a time now. There seems to be plenty of desolation and confusion in the Church, and especially in the world, and there is certainly “no frequent vision.” Yet like Samuel, even though we are in the midst of such a time, our task is to “minister to the Lord” – to serve him with assiduity and dedication within the context in which the Lord has placed us, and in fidelity to what has been handed down to us.
The passage says that “the lamp of God had not yet gone out and Samuel was lying down within the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was.” It is hard not to see in this passage a foreshadowing of the presence of God within his Church – not just spiritually, but his Eucharistic presence in our tabernacles, indicated by the perpetual burning of the sanctuary lamp.
One lesson to draw from this passage, is that despite the fact that the Lord may at times SEEM to have abandoned us, though he seems to be silent, he is in fact always with us, that indeed sometimes we experience his presence AS absence, for any number of reasons. But the fact is that he has promised never to fail or forsake us (cf. Heb. 13.5).
We do well to remember as well that very often in the midst of what seem to us to be times of desolation – such as, for example, the current “economic crisis”, which is affecting many of us, we can very easily jump to the conclusion that God has forsaken us, or that God has allowed catastrophe to come upon us, or that he has fallen down on his main job which is to protect us from this kind of thing. But this kind of attitude – into which we are all prone to fall – betrays a latent tendency to idolatry in our hearts.
If when our money or our material circumstances forsake us, and we conclude that THE LORD has forsaken us, what does that mean about what we thought of the Lord? It means that we had misidentified him with those things that we now find diminished. So desolation can be a tearing down of idols, an invitation from the Lord to examine our priorities, to ask who or what REALLY has ruled us: who or what had really hitherto been our Lord?
But the lamp of God, and his tabernacle, should be a constant reminder that “the Lord is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold” (Psalm 46.7). I sometimes walk or drive by the church at night, when all the lights are out, and I look in the window out there, and see the flame of the sanctuary lamp flickering in the darkness. In fact, the darkness only serves to make it seem brighter. Its there all the time, but when the church is lit up by all this artificial light, you don’t really notice it. But when its dark, when there’s no other light, it can fill your vision, and draw out the otherwise unnoticed or unremarkable contours of your surroundings.
The Lord is like that. We should remember the Lord calling Elijah at Horeb, that the Lord “was not in wind… not in the earthquake… not in the fire”; but was in the stillness and silence. “And when Eli'jah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out” (1 Kings 19.13).
We’re prone to missing the call of God in our lives because we cannot hear him over the din of our circumstances. And things can get so bad that when our circumstances begin to fail, we are apt to conclude that the Lord himself has failed. We can be a “foolish and senseless people, who have eyes, but see not, who have ears, but hear not” (Jer. 5.21). We are often like Samuel, who, according to today’s reading, “did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.” And one wonders whether it wasn’t precisely because Eli was physically blind that he had such keen spiritual sight, and was able to open Samuel’s heart: “Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, ‘Speak Lord, for thy servant hears.’”
If you want to hear the voice of the Lord calling you, you have got to learn to listen for it. The way to listen for the voice of the Lord calling to you is first of all to be quiet; to enter into the silence of your heart, and to close your eyes to the light that reflects so insanely off of the material world with which we are surrounded every day. As today’s Psalm puts it: to meditate on the Lord “in the night watches” – in darkness and silence.
This is not as easy as it sounds. I would encourage you, some time this week, to go to a place where you cannot be disturbed, and to pray. Ask the Lord to speak to you, to open your heart, and to call to you, as he called to Samuel and to Nathaniel. And then close your eyes, and be silent for five minutes. Do nothing but listen in your heart. Just five minutes. You will see how hard it is. But do it. And do it again. Make a habit of doing it.
By degrees the Lord will open your heart, and open the eyes of your spirit, until one day “you will see the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.” What a thought! That our mortal nature is capable of perceiving such a sight! But it is. We were made to see it. We are restless until we see it.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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