Grace Notes column: Hearing the voice of God

By SISTER ANNE MARIE WALSH, SOLT
Columnist
 
People sometimes complain that God doesn’t speak to them, or if he does, they don’t recognize his voice.  We all know stories of people who suddenly hear God speak to them in the midst of extraordinary or dramatic events.  

That doesn’t surprise us as much as the idea that God speaks to us all the time. Yet Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd and says his sheep know his voice. So, what are we to make of this?

It's an important question to ask because God has fashioned us in such a way that our inner life is truly dependent on hearing his voice. And he gives us that capacity from the time we are very young, though most of us don’t recognize it. 

Generally speaking, the most fundamental way God speaks to us is through our consciences, which is why it is so essential to develop a rightly formed, even sensitive conscience.  We are greatly helped in this by remembering that the law of God is written in our hearts. Both the Old and New Testaments hold this as a key concept.  

A healthy conscience judges things by this law written upon our very being. Yet, people often don’t listen, don’t pay attention to their consciences, but instead become lax through the dullness of a conscience that is repeatedly repressed or misdirected.  

While some people may have scrupulous consciences, which is not a good thing either, most consciences today are lax in great part because, as our new Holy Father says, “People have become alienated from the God who lives within them.”

But God continually speaks to us. We can begin to accustom ourselves to the voice of God by starting to follow our conscience, becoming aware of the inner voice that alerts us, cautions us, and tells us yes or no to a given course of action.  We are required to take this as seriously as we can, because this is an area now where we have entered upon sacred ground. 

"Conscience is holy and inviolable: like a consecrated altar or a consecrated chalice. It is, therefore, something before which we must stand in awe. Why is it holy? Because it is most intimately connected with God. It is God’s voice within us, calling us and admonishing us, warning us or urging us on, commending us or reproving us. Therefore, conscience binds us, puts us under a strict obligation, so that it is not lawful for us to disobey its commands or prohibitions. It orders us and binds us with the authority of God, who speaks through it." — Father Benedict Baur, O.S.B.

Sometimes God has to reorient or recalibrate our consciences as he did with St. Paul, who, as Saul, firmly believed he was defending his Jewish faith by persecuting Christians.  Jesus had to give him more light to understand what he was doing, and to St. Paul’s eternal credit, he began to follow a renewed conscience now enlightened by Christ himself.  

One can only imagine what the church might have been like without St. Paul’s renewed conscience.  His life instead became a stunning testament to the fruitfulness of following the voice of the Good Shepherd and obeying his directions.

A friend, really an acquaintance, shared a different but similarly life-changing event. She was on a helicopter flying out to an offshore oil rig where she worked. It seemed to be a routine flight until the helicopter developed a serious mechanical problem and suddenly began to lose altitude, plummeting down toward the sea.

She said she felt calm and rather matter-of-factly said to herself, “So this is it.  I’m going to die.”  But then she heard a voice inside her say, “You better hope not. You’re not going to like where you’re going.”  

She was not destined to die that day, but you can imagine it was a turning point in her life.  She re-embraced her faith and adjusted her life accordingly, accustoming herself to the voice within and becoming an authentic disciple.

If you really want to hear God, now is the time to get in touch with your own conscience, where the voice of God speaks. Do not count on a deathbed miracle conversion. Though it is possible, we generally die the way we have lived.  

It’s not reasonable to expect that we will want to spend all eternity with someone we have ignored our whole lives. But starting with conscience and growing from there, we can begin to live the intimate relationship God wants for us already here and now. We will find all we are searching for by following the voice of the shepherd who leads us to the father’s house, in many different ways, but especially through the gift of conscience.