The Word at work

 

And we also thank God continually because, when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word, but as it actually is, the word of God, which is indeed at work in you who believe.

So write Saint Paul in his first letter to the Christians at the church in Thessalonika (2:13).  The Word is always at work in us. It is the seed of our faith in Christ as Paul indicates in his letter to the Romans (10:17).  We hear the Word, it sinks deep into us and change happens. Maybe it is the work of a lifetime before the fruits are evident (let’s hope that it does not take so long!).

In his Rule for monks, Saint Benedict writes some five centuries later ‘Obsculta, o fili, praecepta magistri’, or ‘Listen, my son, to the master’s instructions, and incline the ear of your heart’, ‘  He opens his Rule by quoting Psalm 34:11, ‘Come, my children, listen to me’.    Éist a mhic we say in Gaeilge which translates literally as ‘listen son’ but can mean simply ‘listen here’. 

But, how can we listen if our minds are dulled and preoccupied with so many things?  How can we listen if we have lost our taste for the Word of God?

The Word is the way from repentance in the third movement of the mass to the fourth which is offering or surrendering all that we have and are.

 

(Picture:  St. Benedict delivering his Rule to St. Maurus and other monks of his order, Monastery of St. Gilles, Nimes, 1129)