Your Servant is Listening

Faith also comes through hearing. We hear that a lot. I used to think that it meant that I have talk about Jesus so that people will start believing in Jesus or that I have to hear something in a homily, in a sermon that will deepen my faith. That is true; it does. Evangelization is a wonderful tool for faith, to strengthen faith. But for us it goes at another level. Faith comes through hearing. Faith for us, first of all, has to come through contemplation. We have to hear it from God. When we hear it from God, we are at another whole level. We know that we know that we know God has spoken. When I really know that God has said something to me, nothing is going to shake that because God said it and I believe God said it. God is true. He does not change His word day to day to day does He? It is the same yesterday, today and forever. I learn to stand on it. I learn to trust it. I learn to believe it and in that belief, I will start acting on it as well. We act out what we believe one way or the other.

In the Old Testament we hear God saying, "Hear O Israel" (Deut 5:1, Deut 6:3). This is when He gave the first commandment. "Hear O Israel. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your strength, all your might and you shall love your neighbor as yourself." He had to preface it with "Hear." He needs our attention. He needs us to listen. The beautiful prophet said, "Every morning He opens my ears to hear" (Zeph 3:5). No wonder these prophets could walk in this type of faith. They heard right from God. They did not have any support system, did they? They were not the most popular people in the world and yet they could stand on that word because they heard it. They allowed God to open the ears of their heart to hear.

Jesus tells us that the new commandment is to "love one another as I have loved you" (Jn 13:34). When we begin to hear that from the heart of Jesus Christ himself, we begin to know it is only possible when the Word is alive within me and He himself is living out His own commandment. That is what is new about it, by the way. He lives it out within us. Faith is our response to God's love. It is our heart response to His heart response.

In Medjugorje Our Lady came to Mirjana one night and said she wanted her to pray for the gift of faith for all the people there. Mirjana looked around and saw that the church was just packed with pilgrims. She was so surprised. She said, "But, Mary, all these people are here! Aren't they here because they have faith?" Our Lady's response was, "Mirjana, there is as much faith in this church right now as the rings on your fingers." Mirjana looked at her hands. She had five rings on. That is not much faith. They were there for other reasons, but not because they believed at the level that Our Lady believed and wants us to share in that belief (Mat 6:30).

As we gain ground in our faith walk, we obtain it for others through our intercession. As we gain that ground, there will usually be intercession at that level and that grace is going to go forth because I am there. I literally, you might say, have purchased that grace, that level of faith for someone and I can count on God doing for them what He just did for me. We are always growing in the level ourselves.

I remember the first time we ever prayed with anyone when I came home from the cloister. That was new for me. In the cloister you do not see anybody except the people you live with. People do not come into cloisters from the outside. Now all of a sudden there are three or four of us praying on a healing team. One day Father had to disappear into the sacristy for a few moments and left us with this person who looked so sick that I was kind of getting panicky. I thought, "Oh my goodness, how can we pray without Father here? We do not know how." So we asked her what she wanted and trusted that the Lord would do it. She said, "I would like to be healed of my headaches. Well, I was still very much at the natural level at that time and I thought, "Oh thank you Lord! It is just a headache. That is not going to be hard. That is not going to take much faith. Just do it." So we just said a simple little prayer, "Thank you Lord. Please heal her headache." That was it!

All of a sudden she jumped up out of the chair. She had been in this excruciating pain, she looked so sick, her skin was so colorless. She just jumped up. She said, "It is gone!" We all looked amazed.

"It is?"

I said, "Well that is nice that your headache is gone." We did not know what to say and finally I said, "Well how long have you had this headache?"

"Nine years."

She had had a spinal tap one time and something had gone wrong. She had this excruciating pain in her back all the time and from then on she had these terrible, terrible headaches. She had been all over the United States to the best doctors and nobody could touch it somehow - nobody - except the Divine Physician. We did not have much faith then, but He took the little we had and He used it. .

As we gain ground, our faith starts to deepen and we start to see God do bigger and bigger things, more of the impossible. We know without a doubt that He loves to do the impossible. All things are possible to Him if we believe - all things (Mk 9:23). We love it because that means we cannot do it. He does not expect us to do it. He just asks us to ask Him to do it. He loves to do the impossible.

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