Thursday of the Third Week of Lent

Lectionary: 240

This is what I commanded my people:
Listen to my voice;
then I will be your God and you shall be my people.
Walk in all the ways that I command you,
so that you may prosper.



Recently we marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Internet. As one who remembers party lines and five digit telephone numbers, it's hard to believe the Internet is only twenty-five years old. But that wonder is only one of the innumerable changes we have witnessed in the last quarter-century. 

If we ever had a pretty good map of the future we don't today; and maps are being replaced by robotic voices that tell us when and where to turn.

We need a Voice -- not of a machine but a Person -- to guide us. 

My Dad died more than thirty years ago. One day I found my mother listening to his recorded voice. I asked her, "Does that sound like him?" She assured me it did. I did not recognize it. My father's voice had become unfamiliar to me. 

To listen to God's voice we must be familiar with it. It's easily shouted over and forgotten in the cacophony of today. 

Listen to my voice; then I will be your God and you shall be my people.

It's not enough to say I studied religion at one time. It's not enough to go by what the sisters or priests said fifty or seventy years ago. They spoke in the Holy Spirit to their time. We must listen to that Spirit in our time, an age those ancients could never have imagined. 

As Saint Luke wrote his narrative of the Holy Spirit -- it might be called "Luke/Acts" -- he accentuated how the times had changed between the dispensation of Jesus' ministry and the post -Resurrection dispensation. The same Holy Spirit governed both eras but the disciples needed a much larger map. Where Jesus traversed only Palestine, they would cross the Hellespont into Europe, and the Sinai into Africa. Where he had spoken only occasionally to gentiles, they would warmly greet, baptize, catechize and commission gentiles as apostles, prophets and evangelists. 

Some of the old Jewish Christians complained; there were terrible arguments and some sectarian splintering. Those who listened to the Holy Spirit remained with the Church; the others wandered off into history and were never heard from again. 

During this Season of Lent/Easter we pray that God will speak to us often, and that we will listen eagerly for that familiar, beautiful voice.