Listen to the Word

     I enjoy beginnings. It’s the middle parts where the struggles occur: too boring, too difficult, too painful. During this past month or so we have celebrated many beginnings both liturgically and civilly: Christmas, the New Year, the Epiphany, the first week of Ordinary Time, the inauguration, Jesus’s first miracle at the wedding feast of Cana.

     It wasn’t the fact that this was the first miracle of Jesus that struck me. Rather it was the authoritative words spoken by Mary to the servers at the wedding when she said “Do whatever he tells you.”  One commentator on this Gospel suggests each of us hear these words as though they are a personal invitation to each of us: “Do whatever he tells you.” 

     I confess I have not heard these words as though they are directed to me. And, how can this come about? I realize this can only happen through the taking of the necessary time to listen to the Word in order to do what the Word asks. In the parable of the sower, the Gospel for today, only the seed that falls on the rich soil yields abundantly. This time we hear her son Jesus, speak a direct invitation: “whoever has ears ought to hear.”  A response to both these summons requires patience, time and commitment.

     As January concludes and February begins and soon Lent I am hoping to have more resolve to follow Benedict’s admonition “to listen with the ear of the heart” and to the doing of whatever Christ asks.  
     Sr. Aileen Bankemper, OSB