Dear Friends,

While shopping,wrapping packages, calling friends,it is easy to forget those hidden away in hospitals, nursing homes, alone without family.  We can all do something, or ask someone to act in our places. Bringing up this article from the past is a way to remind all of us to be aware  of those out of sight and silent.

God bless each of us who have so much.  Peace and love,

Ruth

Advent time – listening time

— Originally posted here on December 01, 2002

Chances are, you would mortgage the back-forty for the silence of an Advent retreat, but God is telling most of us to stay where we are, to seek him in the daily routine of our lives, as did Mary during that first Advent.

She sought him in faith, and heard a voice asking her to become the Mother of the Redeemer. She answered in trust and was later given the wisdom to speak those words Christians have repeated down the centuries – her Magnificat.

From another maiden, St. Joan, through the words of Bernard Shaw, we are reminded of the necessity for prayerful listening, as she replies to the Dauphin’s question of why the voices do not come to him:

“They do come to you, but you do not hear them. You have not sat in the field in the evening listening for them. When the angelus rings you cross yourself and have done with it; but if you prayed from your heart, and listened to the trilling of the bells in the air after they stop ringing, you would hear the voices.”

Praying from the heart ... listening to the bells after they stop ringing. What is Shaw talking about? Mary heard a voice and went off to care for her cousin, Elizabeth, six months pregnant. Joan heard the voices and led an army to defeat the English at Orleans in 1429.

Today, people are hearing voices above the din of TV commercials and jets crashing sound barriers, though they may not think in terms of “hearing voices.”

We hear voices every time we listen to God’s quiet touch of grace, prompting us to stop and help someone in need. or, just to remain in trusting prayer.

In his book, “With Faces to the Evening Sun,” Richard L. Morgan tells this story about a nurse who listened to the voice of an elderly patient.

The man kept turning on the call light by his bed, and the nurse responded to him again and again. Finally, she said: “Listen, that call light is only for emergencies. I just can’t keep running in here when you have no special needs.”

“But I do,” he replied. “I’m terribly lonely here.”

So, the nurse made a deal with him. If he would stop turning on the call light, she would come and spend some time with him, just visiting, listening. He agreed, and never turned on the call light again.

Loneliness in the elderly, Morgan reminds us, is different, in that the emptiness grows out of loss as well as a need. When more loved ones are dead than living, when cherished friends have left this world, one feels acute loneliness, and says with the psalmist: “I am like a lonely bird on the housetop.” (Ps. 102: 7)

By the time this reaches print, Advent will have been well spent. In one way or another, through cards, letters and phone calls, our Catholic Christians have been bringing people together, alleviating their loneliness

Despite all the talk about commercialism, I find an overwhelming amount of generosity, love and service among our laity. If St. Francis were around, I am sure he would walk up and down the aisles of our churches shouting, “Good morning, good people!”

Perhaps the following prayer by Cardinal John Henry Newman will be found helpful as we prepare for Christ’s coming at Christmas, as well as the close of our lives.

O Lord, support us all the day long,
until the shadows lengthen and the evening comes,
and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over,
and our work is done.

Originally posted here on December 01, 2002

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