the pause button, as Art likes to say. Make a decision that during one conversation or one meeting today, you will be silent, just listening to a person when you would typically respond. It might be your spouse, a child, a co-worker, a neighbor. Just pick someone and radically listen. Not thinking in your mind all the responses you will make as soon as the person takes a breath. Not thinking about the Yankees, not wishing you were on the beach, not coming up with responses in your head, but dying to yourself and being fully present to the other person. Take a moment to find peace within yourself, allowing the other person to say what is on his heart or mind.
2. Spend three days in the tomb with Jesus. When something really gets you upset and you want to lash out in anger, remember that Jesus spent three days in the tomb. Wait three days before responding. During those three days, pray. Especially pray for the person you are angry with. You will be amazed to find that on the third day, you are not so upset with them anymore and can respond rationally, calmly, and lovingly.
3. Spend time in silent prayer. How often do we pray when we desperately need something from God? Prayers of petition are important. They acknowledge God’s love and power. But they should not be our only form of prayer. To pray only when we need something is “vending machine” prayer. Let’s try spending some time in quiet prayer when we are not asking or complaining about anything. Find a quiet spot or stop by the church for a visit. Pope Benedict XVI said that silence is “the sphere where God is born.”7
Chapter 2
Listening to Others
It’s very early morning, the sun just beginning to glint gold over the mountaintops, shadows of the night still covering the garden, lush with palms, cypress, and desert succulents. Mary Magdalene enters through the garden’s low archway, her heart aching with desolation, eyes still red with weeping. To her astonishment, she finds the stone removed from the tomb, and she runs back to tell Simon Peter and John. “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him,” she cries.
Upon returning to the tomb, they find it empty. And she remains there, weeping, while Peter and John go into the tomb to investigate. A man she at first takes to be the gardener asks her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”
“Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away,” she tells the man.
Jesus says to her, “Mary.”
At this very moment, she recognizes him, calls him “Rabboni” (Teacher) and falls at his feet, grasping his clothing (John 20:2, 15,16).
Notice that she did not recognize him with her eyes, despite the fact that he bore the wounds of his crucifixion even in his glorified body. Rather, she recognized the sound of his voice as he spoke her name. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27).
Jesus speaks to each of us, calling our name.
He knows us more intimately than we know ourselves. When he calls our name, it resonates within the very depths of our soul. Indeed, this is because he is the God who formed us in the womb: “For you formed my inward parts; / you knitted me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13).
He calls our names, each one of us personally, to love and to share that love. Listen to Love. Listen, to love.
When we listen to others, we show that we love them. Listening puts the other person first. Listening allows the other to flower. Listening creates a space in which love can grow.
The Apostolate of the Ear
Pope Francis tells us that one of the main reasons he decided to proclaim a Holy Year of Mercy is that people today are in desperate need of mercy, and they are turning to many other — often ungodly — things in their search for it. He tells the interviewer, “Mostly, people are looking for someone to listen to them. Someone willing to grant them time, to listen to their dramas and difficulties. This is what I call the ‘apostolate of the ear,’ and it is important. Very important.”1
Those who are in the front lines of evangelization will attest to the fact that so often, argumentation and reason — traditional apologetics — and even catechesis fail to bring their ex-Catholic or “none” family members and friends to the Faith. Sherry Weddell’s influential book Forming Intentional Disciples addresses the fundamental reasons why our evangelization efforts are failing. A major problem is that we do not make the necessary personal connection at the outset. We can argue, quote Scripture, or cite dogma till we’re blue in the face, and we will not win anyone over. She describes how, prior to any catechesis, there are thresholds of conversion that must occur within the future disciple of Jesus: trust, curiosity, openness, and seeking. The second threshold of conversion is “curiosity.” “One of the best ways to rouse curiosity is to ask questions, not answer them.”2
When we wish to draw our fallen-away sons and daughters or our spiritual-but-not-religious friends and relatives back to the Faith, it will not work to lecture, cajole, harass, or argue. Rather, it is when we truly listen to them, allow them to share the issues they are struggling with, that we become able to better answer their questions and hopefully meet their needs. “Often it is better simply to slow down,” says Pope Francis, “to put aside our eagerness in order to see and listen to others, to stop rushing from one thing to another and to remain with someone who has faltered along the way.”3 We must practice the apostolate of the ear.
But not just with evangelization! It doesn’t work to lecture, cajole, harass, or argue with our spouse and kids, either. And listening becomes primary when we are trying to have better connections with our co-workers, neighbors, and estranged family members. Listening carefully to each other is the key to finding meaning, building solid friendships, and creating harmony in our close personal relationships. This is a true mercy.
Improving Our Relationships Through Listening
Austin* was a high-powered, successful lawyer who came to Art seeking counseling for his teenage son, whose mediocre grades and lack of interest in academics were becoming a source of daily conflict. The frustrated dad dragged the recalcitrant teen to the session. Dad was angry; son was sullen. Art listened while the dad vented. “I set everything up for James to succeed,” he began. “All he has to do is his part. Show up. Pay attention in class, go to his tutoring session. He is never going to be successful in life with this attitude.”
James was silent, withdrawn. Art requested separate sessions so that the son could feel free to speak his mind as well. It turned out that James had very different talents and aspirations — talents he felt his dad never acknowledged. He didn’t want to be a lawyer like his dad. He was musically gifted, but his father had never heard him play. Instead, because Austin was so convinced that his son would follow in his footsteps, as he himself had done with his own father, he saw only his son’s lack of motivation and success.
As long as Austin kept hammering away on the single theme of becoming a success (in the way he considered “success”), he would never discover where his son’s passion and talents were. The more apathetic James got, the more his dad pressured him. Art’s intervention was to reassure the father that the way to help his son begin to take charge of his life was not for the dad to do more, talk more, yell more, or pressure more but rather to take a step back, to give the son some space in which to share with his dad his own thoughts and feelings. Austin needed to give his son undivided attention and interest instead of constant commands for success. And then, he needed to listen. To listen empathically, which means that James was able to confirm that his
