Last month Deacon Rich gave a homily in which he mentioned the many methods of communication we have today.  There's newspapers, magazines, radio, television, cell phones, email, voice mail, regular mail, pagers, fax machines, all kinds of things.  We've become a culture of instant communication.  Basic cable offers about 75 channels and with a satellite dish you can receive over a couple hundred stations.  With all this communication, you'd think we would be more connected to each other, across the room or across the globe.

But, sadly, this isn't always the case.  Last week I met someone for lunch at Panera’s and there was a couple sitting at a table across from us and, as they were eating, each of them was talking to someone on a cell phone.  Sometimes that happens in our own homes.  Family members can retreat into their own rooms or their own worlds, staring at their own computers or watching their own TVs or wearing headphones as they listen to their own music.  Despite the proliferation of communication devices, it's often hard for us to actually talk to someone. 

And what suffers from this lack of real talking and listening is healthy communication in the relationships between spouses, within families and among friends.  Real communication takes time and patience and some quiet peaceful space.  And those are tough things to find today.

But there's another relationship, another communication, that is threatened these days.  And that is our ability to hear from God.  When I say, to hear from God, you can ask, how does God speak to us today.  Or maybe for some, the question is, does God speak to us today?  And if so, how does He do it?  Sometimes you hear people talk about their sense of a “call” from God.  That can be a strange notion.  Did God actually talk to that person?  Or did God leave a message on their machine?  What is a “call” from God?  And if God would call you and me today, what would He say?  I think today's Gospel deals with these questions.

We never think about it but every moment of our life all kinds of messages are passing around us and right through us.  Right now, thousands of cell phone conversations, television pictures and radio signals are filling this church, all of them invisible to the naked eye and inaudible to the human ear.  But just because we can't see or hear them doesn't mean they don't exist.  It makes you wonder how many other messages come to us that we also don't hear or pick up on. 

I'll bet in all of our lives there have been sad experiences when a child or a spouse or a good friend was trying to tell us something but we just weren't paying attention.  They were trying to tell us about something that was heavy on their heart and we were focused on the newspaper or the TV or some problem of our own.  They might have been trying to say, “I'm worried” or “I’m afraid” and we might have said, “Uh, huh, what's for dinner?”

We've all missed vital communication before.  But if we're alert at all, we gradually learn from these mistakes and we try to pay closer attention to the subtle and deeper messages around us.  In fact, the health of our relationships depends on our ability to do that. 

But just as we learn to listen to each other, we need to learn to listen more carefully for the whisper of God's voice, too.  I guess God could shout if He wanted to but that doesn't seem to be his way of doing things.  Somebody once said that the deep things of God are not shouted from the rooftops but whispered into our heart.  Our spiritual journey should be the story of our gradual improvement in hearing that whisper.

In the Gospel today, the disciples who eventually followed Jesus didn't immediately spring to a mature awareness of his mission and his identity.  First they heard John the Baptist call our Lord “the Lamb of God”.  Then they asked Jesus if they could follow Him to where He was staying.  Maybe they first thought of discipleship as a mere day trip but certainly not a lifetime adventure.  Later on they began to see that He might be the Messiah but it took them years to learn just what “Messiah” really meant.  Like us, the first disciples didn't come to a spiritual maturity overnight.  It took time and trial and error until the full truth of Jesus began to emerge in their consciousness and they began to understand and appreciate who He was and what it meant to follow Him.

We're on the same journey as they.  Have you grown over the years in your understanding of Jesus Christ and what He’s trying to say to you and even ask of you?  I remember boxing great Muhammad Ali once saying that if a person who is 50 hasn't changed their mind or learned something new since they were 20, that person has wasted 30 years of their life.  What have you heard God say to you as of late?  What have you heard God expect of you as of late?  What have you heard God demand of you as of late?  And those aren’t rhetorical questions.  They’re direct questions, pointed at you and at me.

But we’re never going to be able to answer them if we don’t pay attention to the whispers of God that are directed to us.  We have to practice listening, that is, opening our eyes and ears.  We have to learn to be still and to create quiet time for ourself.  That's the only way to sense God speaking around us and deep within us.

Also in the Gospel note that in the call of Jesus to the first disciples God used the voices of other people to help them hear his call.  John the Baptist pointed to Jesus and interpreted his importance to Andrew.  And Andrew brought Peter to our Lord.  In each case, the call of God took the voice of a human intermediary.  Doesn't this still happen today?  Of course, it does.  Although not every person who claims to speak for God really does so, it's true that God does speak to us through strategically placed human voices. 

I'll bet that most of us can attest to some insight or growth in our relationship with God that hinged on the words of another person.  That person through whom God spoke to us may have been a saint, a spiritual writer, a Church leader, a priest, a deacon or a nun.  But it also could have been a parent or a coach or a teacher.  God's voice could even come through a child or a song on the radio or a line from a book.  If we're listening, if we truly believe that God wants to speak to us and wants to call us to a better life and a holier life and a happier life and an eternal life, then we'll begin to listen to how He speaks to us in many places and through various voices. 

And what will God say?  He'll say the same thing He said to those first disciples long ago.  He'll say, “Follow Me.”  And if we hear that call, hopefully we’ll drop what we’re doing like the Apostles did, leave our old ways behind us and take the greatest journey of a lifetime.