Mass Readings Audio
https://bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/2021-04-25-usccb-daily-mass-readings
Fourth Sunday of Easter – April 25, 2021
Happy Easter and welcome to the one hundred and sixty-first episode of By Your Life. I’m Lisa Huetteman and I know that you have a hundred different things you could be doing right now, so I thank you for choosing By Your Life.
My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular business world. It’s my desire to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.
In this edition, we’ll reflect on the readings for the Fourth Sunday of Easter. In our Gospel this Sunday, Jesus refers to himself as The Good Shepherd. When I hear this Gospel, it is typically very comforting. Jesus is our Good Shepherd. He knows us. He lays down his life for us. He leaves the 99 to go after the one of us who is lost. I want to follow that Good Shepherd. I want to be one of his flock.
These images are very comforting. But this week, I was challenged and not comforted when I pondered the readings. Do I know him “just as the Father knows [him] and [he] know(s) the Father” (Jn 10:15)? Do I recognize his voice? Do you?
Listening through the Noise
There is so much noise in the world. You and I are constantly bombarded with “stuff” clamoring for our attention. It comes at us from all directions, attacks all our senses, and is not always of human origin. Robots call us on the phone and send us emails and texts. Who should we listen to? Who should we trust? Who should we believe? Who should we follow?
I’d like to say that we can turn to the Church, but even that is difficult when although we profess the same creed and celebrate the same liturgies, there is division within the Body of Christ. There was an article in America magazine this week by Thomas J. Reese, S.J., a senior analyst for Religion News Service, titled “We need to talk: healing our deeply divided church and country.” I didn’t agree with everything in the article, but I do agree that Catholics, both laity and the clergy, are divided in their opinions of priorities, policies, and practices. This divide was evident in an “open letter” to the US Bishops posted online that expressed an anonymous person’s disagreement with how they are leading the Catholic Church in America. Anonymous had different priorities and views on what Church policies and practices should be. The commentators were equally vocal about their opinions of how things ought to be.
Fr. Reese offers several suggestions for how we can heal the divide, but he says, the first task is to listen. Fr. Reese wrote, “Listening is just as important a ministry as preaching. We must listen before we speak or write.”
And he’s right. So was Stephen Covey when he penned Habit #5, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”, and Francis of Assisi when he prayed, “O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be understood as to understand.”, and the Book of Proverbs where it was written, “Fools take no delight in understanding, but only in displaying what they think.” (Prv 18:2)
Although there is wisdom in this “listen first” philosophy, it is easier said than done, especially when the goal is listening to understand, not react, rebut, or respond. Listening, like any skill, takes practice, requires time and patience, and most of all, a desire to master it. It is an art that develops over time. It is a process that requires continuous improvement.
Mastering the Art of Listening
I was listening to my sister on the phone last week. (Actually, I started typing that I was talking to my sister on the phone last week but changed it because what she really needed was for me to listen, not talk.) She has been dealing with some personal challenges and was expressing frustration with people who try to be helpful by offering advice when all she needs is someone to listen. I am guilty of this because my tendency is to be a doer and a fixer. If I hear a problem, I want to solve it. I have had to, and still need to, practice just listening.
There are other people in my life who I try to listen to, but we seem to be communicating on different wavelengths. It is as if they’re speaking Polish and I’m listening in English. As much as I want to understand, I don’t have the time or energy to learn Polish, a language that is easy and natural for them. There’s one person who always sends me pictures of little drawings he makes. I asked, “What do these mean to you?” and he responded, “My own voice, composing in the language I seem to speak and understand.” He may be able to speak and understand it, but his response didn’t help me interpret his drawings. But I didn’t need to. I just needed to be interested enough in them to look at them.
Listening is actually much easier when you don’t feel compelled to react, rebut, or respond. I’ve discovered that you don’t need to understand everything, you just need to keep listening, or looking at the drawings. You don’t need to have answers, just questions. When you’re communicating on different wavelengths, asking “Hey, what’s your wavelength about?”, goes a long way. If you listen long enough, you start to pick up on things, even if they are speaking a different language. You hear patterns and repetition and emphasis and emotion. Eventually, you begin to understand. You can’t rush understanding.
Be Not Afraid…
Fear can keep us from listening. We are afraid of hearing something we disagree with and then having to defend our position or even admitting that we can’t. We may discover that we didn’t have all the right answers. We may discover that we don’t have all the facts. We are afraid of being wrong.
Or we’re afraid of what we might have to do if we do listen. We’re more comfortable not knowing because knowing might cause us to have to act. Which brings me back to John’s Gospel and Jesus, the Good Shepherd. Jesus said, “He walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him, because they recognize his voice.” (Jn 10:4) If we recognize his voice, if we listen to him, if we are one of his sheep, we must follow him when he calls us.
And that scares us because he calls us to be last. He calls us to be meek. He calls us to take up our cross. He calls us to die to ourselves. He said, “This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again.” (Jn 10:17) It might be easy to accept that the Shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. But, if we’re following him, are we willing to lay down our lives for him?
Laying Your Business Life Down
I recently read John Abbate’s book Invest Yourself: Daring to be Catholic in Today’s Business World. It is a wonderful book about his journey from an aggressive and competitive businessman, who happened to be Catholic, to a Catholic whose definition of business success was transformed by authentically living his Catholic faith. He transformed his focus from what he could gain, to what he could give.
John Abbate didn’t change overnight in the way that St. Paul did on the road to Damascus. His change began when he listened to the voice calling him to go on a pilgrimage, and he followed it. His change was a process of listening to and following the voice. He changed when he stopped trying to possess life and began to give it away, to lay it down only to take it back up again. He wrote:
“The one thing that is impossible to do with the divine life is to possess it. Why? Because the divine life is a life of love, and true love means self-giving. Real love is about giving it away. To have divine life is to have love in you, and to desire to give away what you have received. By giving you will have it.”
And this transformed his perspective of leadership to one of self-giving service. He discovered that business success and a deep Catholic faith are not mutually exclusive, but instead together form the basis of a life that is rich in what matters.
He referred to Jesuit leadership principles that “sum up the essential realities of leadership we must come to terms with, in order to continue making a difference in the world each day. These principles are equally effective for your family life, your civic commitments, your church involvement—basically for every area of your life.” They are:
We are all leaders and we’re leading all the time. Whether we are doing it well or poorly, chances are we are affecting someone else.
Leadership springs from within. It is about who I am as much as what I do. Therefore, we must know who we are at our core. Even when we stray off our path, we have the foundation of knowledge to eventually come back to our core.
Catholic leadership is not an act. It is my life, my way of living in a manner that honors our essential purpose.
I never complete the task of becoming a leader. It’s an ongoing process of self-reflection and self-evaluation.
Jesus said, “I know mine and mine know me.” (Jn 10:14) To know him, we must sift through all the noise and listen to him because the stakes are high. “There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved. (Acts 4:12)
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, you sent your Son to be our Good Shepherd. Help us to listen to his voice through all the noise in this world. Keep us in the fold and make us one undivided flock of the One Shepherd. Help us to lay down all parts of our lives and follow him, so that in all that we do, we may glorify the name of Jesus.
May God bless you abundantly this week as you listen to his voice and follow him, and may you glorify the Lord by your life. Amen.
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