Nm 24:2-7, 15-17 / Mt 21: 23-27
In a world filled with too much talk, the art of listening is one of the most valuable habits we can ever acquire. Listening can give us access to ideas we’ve never conceived of and insights that might never have occurred to us in a thousand years. And it can open for us the innermost doors of many hearts.
However, despite its manifest and myriad advantages, listening is a skill in short supply. And that is so for many reasons. Sometimes we’re just too full of our own ideas and agendas to make room for anyone else’s. Sometimes we’re too distracted by all the “noise” inside our own heads to listen attentively and peacefully. But worst of all, sometimes we’re afraid to listen, afraid we might hear some valid challenge to our way of living and thinking. We might hear something that would require us to move, to change, to give up one thing and take on something else quite different.
It was that kind of fear that closed the ears and the hearts of the chief priests and elders to whom Jesus spoke. They didn’t want to change, so they attacked Jesus, plotted against Him, and ultimately killed Him.
It’s a dire warning to us all, to see the lengths to which fear can drive ordinary human beings. And it poses an important question: Is fear of any sort causing me to close my mind or my heart to anyone? If it is, it’s time to give that fear to God, so that my heart may be free and open and listening to every single one of God’s creatures, and, indeed, to God Himself.