Speaking Heart to Heart

Synodality is the word we hear a lot and will continue to do so until next year. It is the encounter with the other: communion, participation and mission. It is the desire of the church for all the people of God to walk together, listening to the Holy Spirit and the Word of God.

We hear a great deal about the lack of dialogue within society. The advances in technology have been tremendous they have brought  us closer together in many ways but as with most of our reality we have both the positive and negative which depends on the way used and our values.

Our encounters have multiplied  but have  they increased our interactions on a deeper level or a superficial one? Has our personal communication become deeper? The Pope has in recent years in his Communication Day Messages addressed these issues. Last year it was listening with the heart and this year speaking with the heart "The truth in love" Eph. (4:15). "Among the five senses, the one favored by God seems to be hearing, perhaps because it is less invasive, more discreet than sight, and therefore leaves the human being more free."

In this years message he quotes St. Francis de Sales in one of his most famous statements: 'Cor ad cor loquitur', heart speaks to heart. St. John Henry Newman, chose this as his motto. One of his convictions was: "In order to speak well, it is enough to love well". It shows that for him communication should never be reduced to something artificial, to a marketing strategy, as we might say nowadays, but is rather a reflection of the soul, the visible surface of a nucleus of love that is invisible to the eye. For Saint Francis de Sales, precisely "in the heart and through the heart, there comes about a subtle, intense and unifying process in which we come to know God".

"It is from this 'criterion of love' that, through his writings and witness of life, the saintly Bishop of Geneva reminds us that 'we are what we communicate'. This goes against the grain today, at a time when — as we experience especially on social media — communication is often exploited so that the world may see us as we would like to be and not as we are. Saint Francis de Sales disseminated many copies of his writings among the Geneva community. This 'journalistic' intuition earned him a reputation that quickly went beyond the confines of his diocese and still endures to this day". 

Today we hear often that conversation, the art of relating with others face to face with words is diminishing. Personal interaction is  no longer what it use to be. We have all experienced this in many different ways, all one has to do is ride on a subway for an hour it will  be obvious. Many people are becoming isolated due to the lack of personal interaction and consequently the lack of conversation.

We have all seen picture of family members at the kitchen table with their hand phones in hand while eating. The hand phone is a great blessing but it comes with a cost and the need to discern how it is to be used so that it doesn't stand in the way of our personal  encounters with others in the here and now. St. James exhorts us  in his epistle:The most important task in pastoral activity is the "apostolate of the ear" – to listen before speaking, as the Apostle James exhorts: "Let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak" (1:19). Freely giving some of our own time to listen to people is the first act of charity.

#heart

 

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