Daily Gospel Reflection

How to Hear the Word of God

Welcome back to Radical and Relevant. I'm Matthew Kelly. Each day love exploring the gospel with you and love seeing your comments, love hearing the feedback, and it helps me get better. It helps me get better. This helps me work out what's landing with you, what's not landing with you, what makes sense, what doesn't make sense, what resonates, what doesn't resonate. So please keep sending comments, leaving comments, and I'm very grateful for that. Today's reading is from the Gospel of Luke 11:29-32. When the crowds were increasing, he began to say, "This generation is an evil generation. It seeks a sign, but no sign shall be given except the sign of Jonah. For as Jonah became a sign to the men of Nineveh, so will the Son of Man be to this generation. The Queen of the South will arise at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them. For she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon and behold, something greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will arise at the judgment with this generation and condemn it. For they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here." And so Jesus is foretelling constantly throughout his public life. So telling what's going to happen. He's giving hints and glances and glimmers and peeks at who He is and what He means and why it matters and what's going to happen to Him.

The Word of God, I think, is like that sometimes. We read it and we think, "Okay, I got that one." And then we come back and we read it again and we think, "Oh, I didn't see that bit before." And we read it again and we come back and we'd say, "Oh, that feels different this time." And of course, the Word of God isn't changing. We are changing. Our awareness is changing. Our situations and circumstances in our lives are changing, and the situation, circumstances in your life can completely change the way you hear any given reading in the gospel. But the Word of God isn't changing. We're changing. And so what comes out of that for me is that Jesus is constantly trying to give us these insights. He's trying to give us sort of these glimmers and glances and peaks and at all of reality, at the fullness of who we are and what we're capable of. And the one thing that seems to limit that is our awareness. Word of God isn't changing. We're changing. And how would we describe those changes? Mostly awareness. The awareness might be brought on by different situations and circumstances, but it isn't the situations and circumstances that change the way we experience the Word of God. What happens is we have a different awareness because of the situation and circumstances. And so this awareness is so critical to hearing the Word of God, to applying the Word of God to our lives, to living the Word of God. And so I think what struck me today was just this idea that this awareness is the variable. And I am going to be praying for awareness today. I'll be praying for awareness today.

I'm going to be taking a look at situations. What's my awareness? Is my awareness good in this situation? Awareness bad in the situation? Do I have a blind spot? Do I have a bias? And how can I move the clouds out of the way so that the sun of awareness can shine into my life in a new way? What word, phrase, or idea jumped out at you? And how are you going to use that word, phrase, or idea to anchor your day in the gospel today? Have a great day and remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic.