Closing the Mouth and Opening the Ears.

In the bulletin of a Pastoral Institute, a mother writes a meditation on the Sacred Heart of Jesus.  She remembers putting between the pages of a book a holy card with two rays of light coming from our Lord's heart one red and one white. In John's Gospel, she goes on to say, "One of the soldiers thrust a lance into his side and immediately blood and water flowed out."

She is the mother of two daughters, one  nine years old and the other is six, they still need her help but not like in the past when they trusted in her and she began the long process of trying to understand  them. They often rested on her bosom, falling asleep to the beating of her heart.  She got to know by their cries when they were hungry or needed a change of diapers. It took time, she says, for them to get to  know her and she them.

From the past she remembers the words of a person  who loved potted flowers. They die from either too much water or not enough, by not being concerned with them or by being too concerned with them. Getting to know what is needed, she says, is no easy task--as she  learned  raising two daughters.

To learn about Jesus she  studied  the Scriptures and joined different groups to learn how to pray. She heard that small community groups were important and even became a group leader. But doing so many things just out of habit and doing what others were doing, she wondered if it wasn't all a great deal of window dressing.

Recently she began the study of 'listening'.  Some may think it strange, she says, to have a need to learn how to listen. But she says she finally realized how deaf she had been, how often she had been interested in just talking; becoming aware of this was a painful realization. She has decided to use her daughters, and even Jesus, in order to practice the art of listening. In her visits to the Blessed Sacrament  all was done according to rote.She came to realize that she was not interested in listening as much as persisting in overly thinking her problems and solving them on her own, so much so she was not able to hear any other voice.

She goes back to the picture with the two rays coming from the heart of  Jesus. She knows they have many different meanings and that she doesn't have the necessary knowledge to give a good explanation of what she sees, but  deep down she  knows it is important to close the mouth and open the ears.                                                     
"One remains silent not knowing how to reply; another remains silent waiting for the right moment." (Sirach 20:6)