may seem obvious to a third party, but we all do this from time to time. We are so focused on our own way of doing things or our own perspective on a situation that we actually miss what is really going on. In this case, the dad was so convinced that his son had to follow in his footsteps that he failed to perceive the reality his own son was facing. We may have the one child who, growing up, was always the class clown and the life of the party. We can’t even imagine him growing serious and studying literature and philosophy. Yet, that is what happens when he goes away to college. Or we keep arguing with our spouse about finances, but he is feeling really pressured at work — and we aren’t listening. We have to listen to understand who people are today and — most importantly — to love.
As Pope Francis wisely says,
Instead of offering an opinion or advice, we need to be sure that we have heard everything the other person has to say. … Often the other spouse does not need a solution to his or her problems, but simply to be heard, to feel that someone has acknowledged their pain, their disappointment, their fear, their anger, their hopes and their dreams.4
Preparing a Listening Heart
Before we give some practical suggestions about how to become a better listener, we want to talk about having a heart that is open to the other. Saint Teresa of Ávila used to say that before you pray, you have to remember to whom you are praying. This puts our heart in the right disposition. How many times have we rushed to Mass, speeding perhaps because we were running late, dashing in to find a seat, then quickly making the Sign of the Cross and automatically saying the prayers of the liturgy? And our minds were still whirling with all the things on our agenda that day or with that phone call we took as we were driving to church. Our hearts hadn’t even begun to be in the proper place of reverence and openness to the Lord. When Moses caught sight of the burning bush, he turned to look. Once his attention was turned toward God, God called out to him from the bush; Moses took off his shoes, for it was holy ground.
When we engage in a conversation with someone, or prepare to really listen to a loved one, we ought, as Pope Francis says, to “remove our sandals before the sacred ground of the other (cf. Ex 3:5).”5
Listening is how we get to know another person. It’s more than “straining to hear voices; it’s about preparing the conditions of our hearts, cultivating an openness inside us. In this way, listening is a posture, one of availability and surrender.”6 Listening is more than a matter of technique. It is being open, interested, and radically available to the other. It is not a transaction, but an opportunity for transformation. So, first, let us open our hearts, clear our minds of presumptions, and turn toward the other with reverence.
The Fruit of Listening Is Joy
Henri Nouwen was a Dutch priest and author of more than forty books on the spiritual life, a beloved professor who taught at Notre Dame, Yale, and Harvard Divinity School. Yet, he never felt satisfied — in fact, he sometimes felt depressed — when working in the high-pressure, success-oriented environments of prestigious universities. He ultimately found himself at home at L’Arche, a community where able-bodied people live together with the disabled. Here he discovered profound lessons in the spiritual life. Instead of speaking all the time, instructing others, he grew by attending deeply to a severely disabled man named Adam. Every day he would bathe, dress, feed, and care for Adam for several hours. The time he spent with Adam became his most precious time of day. One day, a colleague of Nouwen’s asked him: Is this what you got all that education for? And Nouwen realized that he experienced a greater joy in caring for Adam than he had ever experienced in his academic career.
Despite all his “upward mobility” — his speaking engagements, his teaching at prestigious universities, his successful career — he felt alone and depressed, anxious that someone might challenge his credentials. Then he realized that Christ’s way is the way of “downward mobility” — the first shall be last; just as “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve” (Matthew 20:28). Finally, at L’Arche, where he lived and served many with disabilities, he found joy and peace. “The joy that compassion brings is one of the best-kept secrets of humanity.”7
This “secret” is what Father Nouwen discovered, and what many of us discover — whether through a gradual process of trial and error or through a trial by fire, in which we are thrown into a situation demanding much more compassionate self-giving than we had ever thought ourselves capable of. And we realize that what the world holds up as a successful and fulfilling life — power, money, prestige — paradoxically brings us less joy than the simple acts of humble self-giving. There is joy in listening.
Saint Paul, writing to the Galatians, compares the “works of the flesh” to the “fruit of the spirit.” The latter are “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (see Galatians 5:19–23).
Works of the flesh cause division, frustration, and lack of understanding. We participate in these works when we are competing with others to be first, wanting to have the last word or make the winning argument — and when we refuse to apologize or stubbornly insist on our own way of doing things. Or you may have erupted in anger when your spouse forgot to pick up that half-gallon of milk you requested. (“And now,” you might have stormed, “there isn’t any milk in the house!”) Or maybe it was that time you had the brand-new daughter-in-law over for dinner and you couldn’t resist arguing furiously with one of your adult children over whether psychological studies contain implicit biases and therefore cannot be trusted.
Listening, by contrast, brings joy.
Listening Is a Mercy
Kindness, patience, and listening lead to peace and joy, intimacy and love. You gain much more when you lose yourself. Lose yourself to silence, understanding, compassion. When the space between you and your loved ones is not filled with you, it can be filled with mercy and healing. Simply attending to the other, looking him or her in the eye, allows for this healing space.
This is love: Letting go of one’s self in order to allow the other to bloom, to reveal himself or herself. As Pope Francis says in Amoris Laeticia: “Those who love not only refrain from speaking too much about themselves, but are focused on others; they do not need to be the center of attention.”8 Love is self-gift and also self-surrender. We willingly abandon ourselves to the other, to be gift as Jesus gave himself in abandonment to the Father.
— Practical Application —
We are going to build on our practical application from the last chapter. In that exercise, our task was to remain silent in a situation in which we really wanted to respond: instead of jumping in with a comment, correction, or solution, we paused in silence. We compared this time of silence to the three days that Christ spent in the tomb.
In this exercise, we are going to practice empathy.
Can empathy be taught?
You may think that empathy is something you have or you don’t, like a natural talent. Some people seem to be naturally empathic. But recent studies have shown that empathy can be taught. Researchers asked whether teaching empathy could help decrease school bullying, improve medical professionals’ bedside manner, or help engineering students relate to others. In one study at the University of Georgia,9 students who came from upper-middle-class families role-played living in an impoverished family — having to find shelter, provide food and clothing, and take care of their children while dealing with constraints such as language barriers and lack of transportation. At the end of the study, it was found that the students did show an increase in empathy. So, in this exercise, we are going to improve our empathy!
Before
