What the Church wants us to contemplate is the voice of Jesus, but not in a literal way.

Most of the time when John uses simple words like see and hear and voice and born again, he is speaking spiritually. He is talking about spiritual seeing and hearing, spiritual rebirth—contemplation and the new life of faith. And so, hearing these words of Jesus about his sheep hearing his voice, we understand what he means, that he is speaking spiritually. He is talking about believers, believers who also obediently follow, believers whose whole lives have been changed, entirely and not just partially, by that spiritual moment, by coming to believe in the Son and in following him.

That’s the voice, what we hear—listening to the Christ we believe in. It is our spiritual communion with Jesus Christ once we’ve come to believe in him, that he is the Son of the Father, one with the Father.[1] That is how we come to know as we are known, by that faith in Christ.[2] That is how we keep with God, praying while believing, which is to listen to God, to continue to know the voice of Jesus.

Here we come to the good of silence and prayer and the evil of distraction and noise, the temptation and danger of that thing you may have in your pocket or your purse right now, which you’ve brought into the house of God, the push notifications, addicted scrolling—the spiritual problem of breaking headlines, the noise of the world, literal and mental (I know my kind). What’s the problem with it? “We will make the whole universe noise in the end,” that clever demon Screwtape wrote.[3] “But when you pray,” Jesus said, “go to your inner room and close the door.”[4] Anyway, you get my point. To hear the voice of the Lord, we must, on a regular basis, separate ourselves from the devilishly loud din of worldly things. It’ll give you atheism if you don’t seek such silence, that atheism which some strangely honor as intelligence, but which is in reality a disease of the spiritual ear, an otherwise avoidable stupidity—if one is careful about the noise of the world.

But this voice we are meant to hear, this grace of God, is also meant to be spoken by us and heard by others. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you,” Jesus said.[5] What we hear, we should speak. But, of course, this is difficult and sometimes dangerous. That’s the simple lesson of this reading from Acts, how those hearing Paul and Barnabas did not like what they heard and so therefore “stirred up a persecution” against them.[6] That you may encounter the same is the point, and so get ready, buckle up; ours is a Church of martyrs and confessors, and so what do you expect? “If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first,” Jesus said.[7] There you go; and so, we preach and bear witness, nonetheless.

In practice, though, what does this mean? First, it means becoming the sort of person who can listen. The rubric in the Missal for the Liturgy of the Word is short and to the point; it just says, “Sit and listen.”[8] That is very good advice. Cut out the noise, close your door, as Jesus said; turn off your phone, he’d likely say to us today—and just sit and listen—in the silence, in the word of God at church and at home. Just listen.

But then pray for the Spirit’s courage to speak. Don’t shy away, don’t cower, don’t leave it to the professionals. Most Christian martyrs were not ordained; they were people like you. It’s just they heard the word of the Lord, and they were steeled by it, and then they turned an empire upside down and conquered the world. Many of you are worried about the world and don’t know what to do; here you go—not politics, witness; not another podcast, prayer; not another politician, but you in Christ doing what’s right without counting the cost. That’s the Christian task; that’s the battle plan; that’s what will save the world. But perhaps too many Christians today just haven’t heard.

This is a day I believe devoted to vocations, “Good Shepherd Sunday.” We are to pray in a special way for more priests; and we should do that. However, it’s also Mother’s Day, and it is simply a fact that the voice of the mother precedes the voice of the priest. As I said, we are first to listen and then to speak. That is true for mothers as it is for priests—for all Christians, of course, but I am talking about vocation now.

A mother’s voice, heard by the child even in the womb—this created and sacred gift; the mother’s voice is given by God, sustained by God. The mother’s voice is God’s media—her tone of voice, the morality of her voice in what she both praises and scorns, in how she comforts and teaches and even punishes. That voice is a sacred thing; that is, it should be a sacred thing. That is, when everything is ordered right, you should be able to listen to God and listen to your mom, and it should kind of be the same listening.

When you see a mom holding her child in church, trying to keep her kid quiet a little, her eyes focused on the Altar, struggling to pay attention, what you see is a woman of God standing in the strength of grace, doing her part for the Church and the salvation of the world; or maybe she’s alone, her husband and children foolishly thinking they’ve got better ways to spend their time on a Sunday, and she’s praying desperately for their souls; when you see such women, what do you see? It is an awesome thing to stand near a mother standing near the Altar of God. It belongs to God’s saving of the world.

Anyway, I don’t want to talk too much more about it; it is a holy thing, honored better by silence and love and gratitude. The Lamb, John saw, also shepherds; think of the paradox of that. The suffering Lamb shepherds, leading others to the waters of life; that is also what mothers do, who through suffering for their children, carry them to God.[9] It is a vocation, like many others found in our Church, that is so beautiful and necessary—but perhaps the most beautiful of all. Anyway, listen to God, and may we become people worth listening to—priests and mothers and fathers and you too, each of us known to him. Amen.

[1] John 10:30

[2] 1 Corinthians 13:12

[3] C. S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters 22

[4] Matthew 6:6

[5] John 20:21

[6] Acts 13:50

[7] John 15:18

[8] Roman Missal

[9] Revelation 7:17

© 2025 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield