Personal Meditation

          Listen the Lord is speaking. There was a time in my life, in the not too distant past, when I truly didn’t know what that phrase meant. For then, I was like a small child lost in the vast emptiness of the dark night. In my loneliness and fear, I began to cry out for help. But my cries seemed to fall on deaf ears; swallowed up by the deafening silence of the night. At the moment of my deepest despair, I heard a voice calling out. At first, it was soft and almost inaudible. I thought to myself; my ears must be playing tricks on me; it must only be the howling winds in the emptiness of the night. But no, there it was again. A little louder this time, but still so soft that I could not understand it. I strained my ears to hear what it was saying and to find out from whence it came. It began to get louder and louder, closer and closer, like the rumbling of thunder across the night skies, until at last, I recognized that the voice was calling my name. It was the Lord’s voice, calling out ever so loudly and clearly, that even in the utter darkness of the night, His voice sought me out and guided me back to Him.

           But that was in the days of my youth, when I was as a child and un familiar with the ways of the Lord. He spoke to me then as a little child, even as any earthly father does, when his child has little knowledge and understanding.

          As I began to grow, however, I had to put aside the ways of my youth. For growth brings with it not only more knowledge and understanding, but also increased responsibility for the exercise of our God given abilities. Therefore, the Lord now began to speak to me in ways that would challenge and provoke me to grow.

          As I became more familiar in the ways of the Lord, I started to hear Him speak to me in new ways. Ways in which He had always spoken, but in my inexperience my ears had not heard. Now I started to hear His voice in much more subtle ways: in Holy Scripture and through the words of His priests.

          But again, as soon as I began to become comfortable in listening to Him speak to me in this manner, He challenged me once again to grow a little bit more, to become yet a little more in tune with His voice. It was then that the Lord called me to the Permanent Diaconate.

          Through the diaconate program, I came to understand and appreciate more fully how the Lord can and does speak to me in prayer, if I will only stop talking once in awhile and give Him an opportunity.

          Although I had previously experienced hearing the Lord in prayer, the occurrences were more accidental then planned, since I was not yet cognizant of the mechanics of meditative and contemplative prayer; nor was I fully aware of their great value. But I soon found the immense value in these forms of prayer: the peace, the joy, the serenity and the love that is experienced in completely emptying one’s self and allowing the Lord to come in and totally permeate one’s whole being. This was indeed another dimension in listening to what the Lord had to say to me.

          The second and perhaps biggest revelation through the diaconate, for me personally, however, was when I became aware of how the Lord Jesus is constantly speaking to me through all those I come in contact with, who are the many members of the same body of Christ.

          Yes, the Lord Jesus speaks to me through all of them: my wife, my children, my family, my co-workers, my brothers and sisters in the Diaconate, all those I come in contact with in my day to day life. If only I have ears to hear what He is saying to me through them. That is the new challenge the Lord Jesus has given to me. To learn to listen to Him through others and to grow through the diaconate program in my constant endeavor to become more of an imitator of Him.