“They know my voice and I know them and they follow me.”
When I was a kid growing up in Ireland,
one of 12 children as you might remember,
there was a lane at the back of our house
where we played when we had the time.
There was quite a distance from the kitchen door to the back lane.
And the rule of the house was this; it was quite simple:
Mum would call everyone for dinner once and once only.
Then the food was served.
If at the end of the meal, somebody did not show,
that plate was free dibs for everybody else.
A very simple rule.
A very effective rule.
Let me tell you.
I remember once I was out playing in the back;
I was in the middle of some soccer game and I was all in.
Suddenly, my stomach starts to hurting
and I’m saying “I’m hungry.”
Mum hasn’t called yet.
I come in and the table is wiped clear.
There isn’t a morsel of food to be found.
Everything is gone.
And everybody is gone except for Mum just cleaning up the dishes.
I asked, “When was dinner?”
She said, “I called. You didn’t come.”
“I didn’t hear you.”
“That’s not my problem. That’s yours.”
I said, “But I’m hungry.”
“I am sure you are but next time, you’ll hear my voice; won’t you.”
No food!
And that was it.
I tried to protest, “I’m still hungry. Can I get something?”
No. That was it. You went to bed hungry.
That was it. No rule change.
I know parents are like,
“Oh yeah! Tell them, Father!
But that might be child endangerment today!
But my mother was a sergeant in the Army.
There had to be a certain amount of discipline
in the house full of 12 kids and that was the rule.
Here is what is interesting.
From that moment on, I never missed a meal.
She could have whispered, “Dinner is ready.”
And I could have been another block away;
another city away, I suspect;
and I could have heard it.
“Dinner. Dinner is coming.”
And I would come running.
You can attune your hearing to somebody’s voice
and we can attune ourselves out.
I suspect as children, we tend to tune our parents out
rather than tune into their voices.
If there was a real cause and effect,
like you didn’t get dinner,
you would tune your hearing very, very fast to it.
Now the reason I bring this up is that
the Lord is asking us to hear his voice.
Now I do not doubt for a moment that we do hear his voice;
we just don’t listen to it.
I believe you know his voice like the way I knew my mother’s voice
but there is a whole cacophony of other voices and sounds
that were playing every day;
so I didn’t tune into it.
But from that moment on,
that sound of my mother’s voice no matter where it was,
I was completely attuned to it.
And I listened because my belly was telling me so.
Now, why do I bring this up?
Because I do think the Lord is calling us.
And he calls us every Sunday to the Eucharist.
I mean our Church is half full today like most Sundays.
And today, if we had maybe 1200 people at all Masses this weekend,
maybe we might get a little larger
but it is roughly about 1,000 people a week;
so there are more than 1,000 Catholics in Los Altos;
I mean they are hearing the Voice;
they are just not choosing to listen to it and not come to the table.
Because this is spiritual food.
And when we go from here
or when we do not show up?
Not that we won’t give it to you when you come here,
of course we will,
but we do experience spiritual hunger.
Again, we have even tuned out that;
the spiritual hunger;
the spiritual pangs;
our grumpiness;
our irritability;
our intolerance is a sign of our spiritual hungers.
We need the nourishment of this table.
We need the Body of Christ each week
for our spiritual bodies so that we can be nourished.
I do not want all of this to be about coming to Mass on Sunday;
this is not what it’s about.
But the Lord wants us to do that every single day of our lives.
But if we are not doing it just this once on the weekend
then how are we going to learn to do it every day of our life?
That is what we are called to do.
We are called to go,
and you have heard me say this a thousand times,
we are called to be men and women,
boys and girls of prayer; of deep prayer.
And what do I mean by deep prayer ?
Sometimes when we go to prayer
we add to the cacophony of voices
and we just say our prayers: “blahblahblahblah”
and then that is all we hear is our voice back to God.
And that is great as a starting place,
don’t get me wrong,
it is a great starting place because that gets us there.
But then we must pause and listen.
We need to attune our hearing to that Voice of the Good Shepherd.
Then we will hear the instructions for our heart.
Then we will get spiritual nourishment that will feed our soul.
Then we will get the Word of God spoken to us
and we will hear how well the Lord knows us
and wants the best for us.
Unless we carve out that time to sit
and to be quiet with the Lord to come to hear his Voice
then we will just go about our every-day busyness;
and there are plenty of other voices out there
to listen to that will take away our attention.
Today we celebrate Mother’s Day and
it is of particular importance in our life
because they are most often who took food away from us;
the ones who showed us how to listen;
sometimes it took taking the food away from us to get our attention.
But they are also the first ones who teach us how to love;
to be a listener for others and
to attune our hearing to the needs of others
because mothers are serving us constantly day after day.
We are called to be disciples not just of our mothers,
but of our Lord, the Good Shepherd.
We are called to carve out that time every day
to attune our hearing to the voice of the Good Shepherd.
It is so important, not only important to listen but to follow him.
And what does that mean for us?
It means that we are called to be the first ones
to be kind and gentle and
not just to those who are kind and gentle to us.
That is easy.
We are called to be kind and gentle
to those who are not kind and gentle to us.
We are called to be forgiving
to those who are not forgiving to us;
we are called to be loving
to those who are not loving to us.
That is what it means to follow the Lord.
And that, my friends, is hard, hard work.
And if we are honest then we know
we need the nourishment from this table every week.
We need to see each other and be strengthened
with others that are on the same journey,
the same path, of listening and attuning our hearing
and then following the Lord.
Come and nourish yourself at this table today.
Attune your hearing to the Good Shepherd’s Voice.
And follow what you hear.
