Do We Hear His Voice? Listening for the Good Shepherd
“My sheep hear my voice;
I know them, and they follow me.”
I invited the first communicant boys and girls
to come forward and sit on the ground facing me.
I told them: “I am going to run a little test.
Two parents will each say two names.
You cannot look around. No looking around.
You will listen to the two voices,
and you have to tell me which one is your parent
without looking around.”
The two mothers stood and called out the names.
And every child got it right.
They knew their mother’s voice.
They did not need to see her;
they recognized her voice.
The parents were going, “Thank God!”
Then I asked the children a simple question:
“Do you always listen?”
“Oh, listening is a bit of a problem,” they admitted.
We hear the voice, but we do not always listen.
Why? Because we get distracted.
There are lots of things we are doing,
and we want to do what we want to do,
and maybe not obey.
That is the exact same challenge with God.
Jesus comes to us and says,
“My sheep hear my voice.”
But He does not stop there.
He says, “They follow me.”
He leads them out of the sheepfold
into the pasture, to nourishment.
But they have to come and follow Him.
Boys and girls, that is what you have been doing
over these last few months in preparation for today.
You have had people who led you
to listen to Jesus in your heart,
and to follow what you heard.
That is why you are here today.
You will come to be fed at the table.
That is the pasture.
The challenge for us is that we have to find a way
not just to hear, but to listen.
And listening takes effort.
That is why you have learned different forms of prayer,
so that you pray not just on Sundays,
but each and every day.
Pause after you have said your prayers and listen:
“What would Jesus have me do here?
What is Jesus leading me to do?”
Then you become food for others
when you do that right thing, that good thing.
When you are kind to your mom, your sister, your brother,
that is being food for them.
You become what you receive,
the Body and Blood of Christ for others.
[Turning the adults]
I asked the children: “Do you listen?”
And so I ask you: do we listen?
We hear the voice of God,
but do we actually listen?
Truth be told, we probably have more distractions
than they do.
We have so many voices telling us what to do,
from the moment we wake, to the moment we sleep.
There is even a whole new group of people
with a new title called “influencers.”
And guess what? They get paid to influence us.
They tell us what to wear, how to wear it,
what to say, and even what to believe.
They have an agenda, my friends.
That is not the voice we are called to listen to.
The voice we are called to listen to
is in today’s gospel.
It is the voice of the Good Shepherd.
We are called to attune our ear to that voice.
And that takes work,
because there are so many competing voices.
Let me give you two examples from this past week.
The first was one of our people
finishing the SEEL program,
Spiritual Excercises in Everyday Living.
She came to me and said,
“Father, I am finally getting it.
I can really hear the voice of Christ in my life.
I can tell when it is His voice
and when it is some other voice.”
I was deeply touched.
But what she said next really got me.
She said, “It is a commitment I have to renew every day.
I can untune my hearing just as quickly.
After 68 years, I can finally hear
Christ’s voice in my heart.”
The second example: this past week
I was at an AI ethics conference
in Spokane, Washington.
A whole group of us got together,
theologians, priests, philosophers,
industry leaders, people from healthcare and education
and we gathered around to listen.
To listen to the voice of Christ among us
and ask the difficult questions:
How do we get these powerful AI systems
to help us be the best version of ourselves?
How can we help these machines
to serve the common good,
and hold on to human agency,
instead of just letting it go where it goes?
We had to listen to one another.
We had to hear the voice of Christ among us.
Why do I bring those two examples up?
First, because we have to do it for ourselves.
Second, because we have to do it together.
These boys and girls are going to rely on us
to learn how to listen.
They look to us to know how it is done.
So, I am asking you to make the commitment
to listen to Christ in your own heart
each and every day. To pray.
You have heard me say it a thousand times.
But to really pray, and to really listen.
And by doing so, you will teach them
how to do the very same thing.
Many of you work in the high-tech world.
Many of you are involved in AI industries.
Do not just go along.
Do not let the voice of money and power
drive this new technology.
Stand up and use your voice.
Let the voice of Christ speak through you,
and listen for the voice of Christ.
These technologies will take us
to places that are great,
but they can also take us to places
that are not so great.
It is up to us to use our voices
and to listen to the Shepherd among us.
And remember what the Lord does.
He leads us into pastures.
He nourishes us. He protects us.
But we first have to listen to His voice,
and then follow it.
So today, boys and girls,
and to all of us,
attune your ear to the voice
of the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ,
and follow the example of your parents
and your grandparents.
Listen to that voice.
It is gentle and it is true.
And together, we will follow what we hear
to the good of all of us,
into eternal life,
which is what Christ promises.
“My sheep hear my voice;
I know them, and they follow me.”