How do I listen with small children? Is listening simply reading the scriptures? If I read passage after passage, book after book of the Bible, have I really prayed if I have not discerned God as a Person there, and adjusted my life to what I have heard? Mary goes further than simply hearing or reading the word in a cerebral way that does not penetrate or move her. She knows how to listen unto contemplation and union.
Study Audio
LOVE the Word™ is a Bible study method based on Mary’s own practice. This week’s LOVE the Word™ exercise is based on a Ignatian* personality approach. Go on! Try it!
Listen (Receive the Word)
Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Mid’ian; and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.
And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush; and he looked, and lo, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.
And Moses said, “I will turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.”
When the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here am I.”
Then he said, “Do not come near; put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
And he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God” (Ex 3:1-6).
Observe (Connect the passage to recent events.)
Late morning on the shadow side of the distant mountain, the air is already so hot the horizon undulates for miles, when just hours ago the barrenness was so frigid he’d shared breath with huddled animals. He can smell burnt dirt and grass under the harsh odor of either himself or the pissing goats.
Pathetic animals are goats and sheep. Always falling into a crevice or ravine; always running away when you call them; always hungry and thirsty; always head-butting and locking horns; always wandering around in every direction at once; never know where the hell they’re supposed to go; always bleating for something.
The wide-open silence is so penetrating he hears his fingernails scratching against the woolen-felted skull of an ewe that nuzzles and nibbles against his fingers. He strokes her upturned face.
His stomach growls as the wind blows hot air and sand from a long distance up his flapping tunic and rattles the few dried weeds, but all he feels as he leans against his gnarly staff, looking out over the remote wilderness, is useless. Stupid.
Once the educated, accomplished, prodigious Prince of Egypt, but now exiled. A stinking fugitive goat herder. Named to be a deliverer of his Hebrew people, but washed up now. Finished. Abandoned. Punished. If anyone knows he deserves this grit rather than a silver spoon in his mouth, it’s him.
He’s been out here in the “desolate places” of Mt. Horeb, on the run, for forty years, the coulda-beens replaying over and over in his mind. People used to bow to him. But now, not even the sheep hear his voice. There’s nothing left of that life. It’s all been completely stripped down, cut off, and excised out here in the desolation.
Ah, well, the same acute sense of righteousness that once provoked him to murder assures him he deserves this life-sentence. If you can’t run with pharoah’s chariots, then get thyself to the desert, is his attitude as he catches sight of a flame leaping up out of the distant heatwaves.
Is the sand on fire? he thinks, and then feels stupid again. There’s not enough vegetation to burn. But it’s definitely fire. Must be a dittany shrub. Those scraggly bushes burn themselves out in a minute’s puff, so his attention wanders. He watches without seeing it, and wonders about his mothers back in Egypt, one his Hebrew birth mother, the other his Egyptian adoptive mother. Is she ashamed? Angry? Alive? He stabs the staff into the dirt and kicks at the dust he raised. Where is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob out in this forsaken wilderness, this vast open sky, this yawning abyss? Where? Nowhere.
He turns to collect the animals and herd them to shelter for the evening, but the light from the fire is oddly brighter in the growing gloom, and a shiver warns him when he still sees the clear outline of stems and stubby leaves inside its distant glow. Intrigued, now, he peers through the rosemary-scented cloud of smoke blowing over him in the wind. His steps quicken as he hurries to investigate, and he is utterly horrified when a disembodied voice flares out from the crackling flames and erupts in a burst of popping light that burns through him with its terrible snapping sound: “MOSES.”
As though Moses had earlier spoken his thought aloud, the blazing bush thunders, “I AM the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” as He calls him out of the desert to the salvation Moses was named and had been preparing for all along.
Verbalize (Pray about your thoughts and emotions.
Dear Jesus, forgive me for believing I could run from my sin. I pretended that you did not see me and expected no one would know, but it has separated me from what I love and exiled me to a lonely barren land.
Today, help me to cooperate with my desert surroundings to do away with all the trappings of sinful Egypt that crowd and drown and suffocate your work in me and deceive me into thinking I am where you are. Help me to hear your voice in my desolations, so I can encounter you on a level that will transform me forever.
Like Moses, I know what failure feels like. But I also want to experience you, to hear you speak in that fire and flame, to remove my shoes in awe, and leave your presence ready to change the world. Please call me forward, Lord, to where you are, be it desert loneliness or barren wilderness. I am at the foot of the desolate mountain, wandering around, killing time, awkwardly groping for you. And as you summon me, make me know in my depths that even while I ran from my guilt, you were already waiting for me in the desert.
Entrust (May it be done to me according to your word!)
Perhaps you want to rest your little woolen head in the Good Shepherd’s lap and let him hold you tight, or reflect on how you can be a better shepherd to serve, protect, and defend your family and the Church against the wolves and hirelings of the culture.
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*LOVE the Word™ exercises vary weekly according to the four personalities, or “prayer forms,” explored in Prayer and Temperament, by Chester Michael and Marie Norrisey: Ignatian, Augustinian, Franciscan, and Thomistic. These prayer forms correspond to the Myers-Briggs personality types.
Episode Resources
This week’s LOVE the Word™ exercise is from chapter four of my newest book with Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers: Ignite, Read the Bible Like Never Before, available for pre-order with a 30% discount using code SPARK here.
Ignite will be out August 17. Get a preview of the introduction and first chapter here.
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10 YO Corbitt
this speaker kept getting distracted and began to go in different directions, and got off subject matter. It is difficult to listen to something important when the speaker is not cautious of the importance of restricting the meat of the message to the beginning of the talk, instead of rushing to get it all in at the end, because of not using her time efficiently at the beginning. I was very interested to hear the message about the ways of Prayer from St. John of the Cross so I listened to the end.
Kathy, Actually, I followed my outline exactly; perhaps because I did not share it, you found my through-line hard to follow. That’s fair. I have to keep in mind the wide variety of my listeners, some for whom the primary reason they listen, and/or their learning style, is not accumulation of “information.”
The purpose of the podcast was how to listen. Sharing the call to Carmel was to show how to listen to circumstances along with the word. Pope Francis’ commentary on Mary was to outline how to listen like her, according to him. The purpose for sharing how to listen with little kids is to help mothers of small children structure a “listening” time like Mary’s. And finally, John of the Cross’ stages are to help those feeling lost in their listening, to know they are likely right where they ought to be. I am glad you got something out of the podcast by “listening” to the end.