Daily Gospel Reflection

God Speaks to You

Welcome back to Radical & Relevant. I'm Matthew Kelly, and today's reading is from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 2, verses 13 through 18. Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Rise, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt and remain there till I tell you, for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him." And he rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. Out of Egypt have I called my son.

Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, was in a furious rage, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all the region who were two years or under, according to the time which he had ascertained from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah. A voice was heard in Ramah wailing a loud lamentation. Rachel weeping for her children who refused to be consoled because they were no more. What jumps out at you today? Well, this guy was a monster, right? I mean, he was a psychopath, sociopath, narcissist, maybe all of that, and probably a few other things.

He's so afraid of an infant child. He is so desperate to hold onto his power that he has all male children under the age of two in a whole region slaughtered. He was a monster. There's no other term for it. He was a monster. And we have monsters like that in our world still. We have monsters in our world like that still. And then we've got Joseph, whose job is to protect this child from this monster and many other monsters and evils and difficulties and challenges that will come. And the kid's just been born. And Angel appears to him in a dream.

What would your family and friends say if you said to them tomorrow, "Yeah, I'm moving to Egypt." Angel appeared to me in my dream. They'll think you're nuts, right? They'll think you're nuts. One of the things I really believe is that God wants to speak to us, that he does speak to us in so many ways, but that we block his voice out. In my book, The Three Ordinary Voices of God, I speak about the ordinary ways that God speaks to us, but I also speak about how I believe He wants to speak to us also in extraordinary ways, but we don't even open ourselves to the idea. We don't open ourselves to the idea that He might speak to us in our dreams. We don't open ourselves to the idea that He might actually speak to us, maybe not in an audible voice, but in a voice clear and distinct in our hearts.

I was in Fatima recently for the World Consecration. And it was an incredible experience, so powerful. And so powerful, we've decided we're gonna do it again. And we're starting to plan that now. And I'm excited about it again already. But three of my children were with me, Isabel and Harry and Ralph. And they were there. They were taking notes each day. And when we were going to bed that night, I asked the kids, "How was your day? What did you think of the retreat? And do you have any questions?" And Isabelle said, "I have a question." I said, "Okay, what's the question?" She said, "I wrote in my journal." I said, "Okay, we'll go and get your journal." So she goes and she gets her journal and she brings it back and she's written in her journal, "How do I tell the difference between God speaking to me and my own thoughts?" I thought, "Wow, what a beautiful question. What a beautiful question." You got a 12-year-old. You got this beautiful question.

And it really touched me beause guess what? It is a question every single person who ever in the history of the world took the spiritual life seriously, we all had that question. What is the difference between hearing the voice of God and our own thoughts? And the answer is, sometimes the difference is everything, and sometimes the difference is nothing because sometimes God uses our thoughts to speak to us. And sometimes he speaks to us in other ways. Natural, supernatural, but he's always speaking to us. And of course, when we think we're hearing the voice of God, we need to test that. We need to test that against the Word of God. We need to test that against the tradition of the church. We need to test that against church history. We need to test that against the universal code of holiness.

God's great dream for us to become the-best-version-of-ourselves and help other people become the best version of ourselves. God's speaking to us in lots of ways all the time. In the Bible, the most common preface to any sentence, God said, God said to Adam, God said to Noah, God said to Moses, God said to Abraham, God said to Mary, God said to everybody. And it is not that he has stopped speaking, but that we have stopped listening. It's time to start listening to the voice of God again. Have a great day, and remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic.