Listening to the Voice makes us people of God!

Listening to the right voice

THE WORD IN LENT 2026 - SATURDAY FIRST WEEK

Deuteronomy 26: 16-19; Matthew 5: 43-48

Listening to the right voice - at the end of it, we are back to where we began this week. We are constantly bombarded with voices in this world - the voices that sound right and just, the voices that cry out for settling scores, the voices that claim to achieve something good by any means, the voices that calculate, measure, compare and balance on scales the words and actions of others in order to repay in the same coin!

Are we going to listen to all these voices - which are at the same time loud and logical? Or are we going to discern the right voices to heed to? The Word today declares - if you keep all his commandments... you will be a people consecrated to the Lord, as he promised. That is the secret: we shall be made people of God not by listening to interesting voices, loud voices, logical voices or the voice of the majority, but by listening to the Voice of God, and the Voice of God alone!

We have it in the Gospel: but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. That is the Voice. The other voices we hear would call this naivety, or  utopian! But that is the right voice to hear, the voice that comes from the right source, the voice that can set us apart, the voice that has made the covenant with us that we shall be His people and He shall be our God. 

If we have to be people of God we have to listen to that voice... and love, forgive and be perfect. Our perfection cannot go by any voice we hear - egoistic, polemic, vindictive, violent or competitive. It has to be that One Voice that we have to listen to - and that alone can make us the people that we have been created to be. We may have doubts whether we can really listen to that Voice and live up to this command. Lent is a time that comes to assure us that we can, because we belong to that Voice, that Voice which makes us people of God. 

Choose to listen, forgive and live!

Listening to the right voice

THE WORD IN LENT 2026 - FIRST WEEK FRIDAY

February 27 - Ezekiel 18: 21-28; Matthew 5: 20-26

Listening to the right voice - that call deepens as we get nearer to the close of the week. We are called to listen because the Lord our God listens, the Word reminded us yesterday. How does the Lord listen? That would be the part of discussion today illumined by the Word. The Listening God - listens to our cry, our genuine groans and our sincere efforts, rising out of our limitedness but also our integrity. 

There are three layers to the message that the Word offers us today - the first is call to choose to listen. At times what we do and what we say become secondary to what we choose to do or choose to say. The intention is what really matters, in everything, be it in everyday experiences or in special life-time choices. Our God is a listening God, because God chooses to listen! It is not that God has to listen... God is almighty, but chooses to listen to us, understand us and accept us with all our idiosyncrasies, because God loves us, God has chosen to love  us. 

A second layer consists of the fact that the Lord has chosen to forgive - the first reading in its candid clarity presents to us the fact. We are forgiven, not for what we do or what we achieve, but for what we feel at heart, what we choose in our mind, what we identify ourselves with. If we identify ourselves as people and children of God, in spite of the weaknesses that we possess, we choose God! When we choose God, we do good to ourselves, because God has already chosen us, chosen to forgive us and chosen to accept us totally. A sign of God's choice to listen to us, is God's choice to forgive us - it is from there our new life is born. 

A third layer of this message, that Jesus underlines is - when we choose to listen, that is, when we choose to forgive, we choose to live. Choosing God, choosing to listen to God, choosing to remain in the forgiveness of God and choosing to forgive each other, we choose to live, to live to the full. Choosing your words, choosing your dispositions, choosing your brother and sister, choosing God above all - that is the choice for life. Virtue is integrity, it is an interior choice; duplicity is a vice, the worst of its kind which impedes life. 

Let us choose to listen; choose to forgive and choose to live!

Listen; because the Lord your God listens!

Listening to the right voice

THE WORD IN LENT 2026 - FIRST WEEK THURSDAY

February 26 – Esther 4: 17; Matthew 7: 7-12

Listening to the right voice, is the call… but the question might be, why should we listen. We have a famous line of answer… the Lord told us through Moses (Lev 19:2) – be holy, because I, the Lord your God, am holy; just so, we have to listen, because the Lord our God listens! This is the message that the Word today gives us.

We find ourselves with Queen Esther in the first reading today. She is out there to face the great powers of evil and treachery, all alone. But she does not feel alone, for she knows that there is her Lord and God who listens. And that is why, she prays! “I am alone, and have no one but you Lord” she says… making it clear to herself, that she is not really alone! The listening God was there with her!

Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me – we repeat that in the responsorial today, once again reiterating that we have a God who listens, One who is close to us and knows our situation even before we say anything. But on our part, if we have to understand and experience the listening God – Jesus teaches us – to ask, seek and knock. It is not that only when I ask the Lord will give; it is not that only when I seek I will fill; it is not that only when I knock it will be opened to me… but when I do it, I feel listened to, for certain.

Our Lord is a listening God, because God is close to us, near us, beside us, with us and within us. God knows our needs even before we could think of asking God for it… but when we ask, we feel we are answered. The Lord has his hands, and his heart always open for us to enter, but when we knock, we feel attended to. The Lord is right there beside us, but when we call out like those disciples on the boat or Peter who was sinking, the Lord extends his hands and touches us…and we feel assured, as Queen Esther felt.

The Lent is a wonderful moment to have all these shades of experiences, because it is a time of getting back into the embrace of the Lord. A time when the Lord promises to create a pure heart for us and give back the joy of our salvation… because the Lord listens to our inner cries.

We are called to be holy because the Lord our God is holy! We are called to love because the Lord our God first loved us! We are called to listen to the Lord, because the Lord our God always listens!

 

Sign of Jonah: the Nineveh Factor

Listening to the right voice

THE WORD IN LENT 2026 - FIRST WEEK WEDNESDAY

February 25 – Jonah 3: 1-10; Luke 11: 29-32

Listening to the right voice, the thematic of the week, has taken us on a path to reflect upon the inevitability of listening to the voice of God, if we wish to be truly people of God and on the signs of having listened to that Voice. Today the Word presents to us yet another aspect: the condition of listening to that Voice. In other words, when are we ready to listen to the Voice of God?

Let us have a close look at the experience underlying which connects the first and the Gospel readings today – the episode of Jonah at Nineveh. The first reading narrates to us the experience, and in the Gospel reading Jesus refers to that incident to offer us a poignant lesson: the Nineveh factor!

Nineveh which was so bad, that it was picked to be destroyed; but the whole scenario over turns and Nineveh becomes a model to be cited, and a benchmark to be referred to. We see in the Gospel today that Jesus makes Nineveh even a judge who would condemn the incredulous generations. This is what we could call the Nineveh factor offered to us to consider in this season of Lent.

The Sign of Jonah that Jesus speaks of is the coming of the Son of Man, who is chosen and put through the ordeals of obedience, and sent to the people – to proclaim, to announce and to preach the Word! The Word is sent… that is the sign that the salvation has come into this world, that the salvation has come to our doorstep… but the responsibility is ours to accept it or not, receive it or not, submit ourselves to it or not.

What is the condition, in which we would be ready to accept it, receive it or submit ourselves to it: that is the Nineveh factor - the broken, humbled heart that God will never spurn. That is key to understand the aforementioned transformation of the status of Nineveh – from the condemned to the role model!

The first element of this factor is the sincere self-recognition, that comes out of a spiritual awareness and openness. To recognise the limits within oneself and its roots, is a great big first step…and many, or even most, of us arrive at this step. It is the second step that creates problems: the acceptance and acknowledgement of the condition of limit. The moment we realise our weakness or limit, we have the natural tendency to deny it, hide it or justify it. That makes sure that we do not really hear or listen to what the Voice or the Word wants from us.

The third element is the crucial element of humbling ourselves with a broken heart and seeking healing from the Lord. The Voice invites us to that at lent. What is there that we can hide from God and from God’s Spirit? The call is that we go to the Lord with a humbled, contrite, broken heart and the Lord in the abundance of love and forgiveness shall make us whole again!

How do you know that you have listened to the Voice of God_

Listening to the right voice

THE WORD IN LENT 2026 - FIRST WEEK TUESDAY

February 24 - Isaiah 55: 10-11; Matthew 6: 7-15

Listening to the right voice, is the call that we reflect upon this week, and we discussed the way to listen to the Voice of God, the right voice to be listened to. Today the Word wishes us to focus on how we can say that we have listened to the voice of God? By the fruits that we bear!

Isaiah makes it clear that the Word of God (the Voice), when it reaches out to someone, does not leave without touching that person in some way. The effects shall certainly be seen - we have examples of persons who encountered Christ, the Word made flesh, in the Gospels, who lives were changed forever; and not just that, there are scores and scores of others in history too who have been touched by that Word and have been left totally re-created! 

In the Gospel Jesus gives us the model of all prayers, teaching us to pray that God's will be done on earth, as it is done in heaven - but how can it be done on eath, unless we dedicate ourselves to do it or dispose ourselves towards getting it down. This is the point that Jesus wants to make...that when we truly allow the Voice of God to descend into our hearts, we will see the effects of it - the doing of the will of God, on earth as in heaven.

At times in the season of lent we look at our lenten discipline as a means to achieve great feats and demonstrate immense strength, but the lent is indeed the means to listen to the voice and how do we know that we have listened to the Voice of God really... by the fruits we bear, that is our actions, the outcomes, our acts, our prayer - these are the only signs we have to tell ourselves and tell the world that we have listened to the Voice of God. Let the world see your life and give glory to God!

How do you listen to the Voice of God?

Listening to the Right Voice

THE WORD IN LENT 2026 - FIRST WEEK MONDAY

February 23 – Leviticus 19: 1-2, 11-18; Matthew 25: 31-46   

Listening to the right voice, is the task proposed this week and the Word this Sunday outlined to us that only right voice to be listened to is the Voice of God. Or else, we shall be deceived by the voice of the serpent or ruined by the negative voice of death. But the question is how do we listen to the voice of God? The Word answers that today: by listening to the voice of the other!

Listening to the voice of the other means to stop talking first – that is the first level! We have so much to say, so much to publicise, so much to trumpet around – all about ourselves. My wishes, my desires, my sufferings, my difficulties, my sacrifices, my hard work, my successes, my praises and my glories… we have to stop this whining and drowning in the flood of self-love that the culture proposes today – and lent is simply a training lab for it.

Listening to the voice of the other means first of all hearing the other… a second level. How can we think of listening unless we are first of all,  ready to hear. The book of Leviticus invites us to hear the other before slandering, or passing a judgement, or hating, or deciding to avenge him or her. It is important that we place ourselves in the shoes of the other – the less fortunate, the exploited, the weak, the vulnerable, the helpless other. But why should we do it? Because the Lord does, and we are people of that God.

Listening to the voice of the other means empathising with the other. It means something when we hear out someone sharing about themselves, but it means totally something else to understand what some feels, when someone shares! It is altogether another level to sense, intuit and understand what one is going through even without the person saying it out in words – that requires a listening from the heart! This is how we are called to listen, because that is how God listens!

When the words from Leviticus says, be holy because the Lord your God is holy – what is meant is that we love as the Lord loves, in deeds and not just in words, that we listen as the Lord listens, from the heart not merely by the ears! By listening like the Lord, we listen to the Lord; by empathising with the other like the Lord, that we become like the Lord – be ye holy as thy Lord God is holy! 

LISTENING... TO THE RIGHT VOICE!

The voice of the serpent? the voice of death? or the Voice of God?

THE WORD IN LENT 2026 – FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT

February 22 – Genesis 2:7-9, 3:1-7; Romans 5: 12-19; Matthew 4: 1-11

We have begun this Lent with the two-word orientation of our Holy Father – Listening and Fasting. The Word this Sunday and that of the next, invite us to ponder on the first term – listening! Listening, we know, is the most fundamental disposition for our Spiritual life and our growth in it.

Let us begin with a metaphor, from our daily life experience… listening to a radio, a FM: nowadays it is has gone to advanced levels of spotifies and podcasts… although analogously even they can be considered, the classical functioning of a radio is an ideal metaphor to understand. When we switch on a radio, it is not automatic that it plays. It has to be tuned to a particular frequency, in order to hear or listen to a particular content. And as we tune, we keep passing by so many other frequencies that play too…probably what we have chosen not to hear. This one of the primitive experiences of channel surfing, which later applied to satellite TVs and then to the internet and so on. One experience while radio surfing could be that we stumble upon a frequency where something interesting, attractive or capturing draws our attention. Either we get stuck to that stumble and forget the original destination, or we are two minds whether to follow on to where we were originally destined or to continue listening to this new voice stumbled upon!

That metaphor can help us understand many a phenomenon we experience in the world today – there are myriad voices that clamorously claim our attention every day. So much so, on our project to Listen, the crucial question that emerges would be: listen, yes, but to which voice? This is the first plane of reflection that Lent this year invites us to: are we listening to the right voice?

The voice of the serpent: One of the many voices that we have to beware of is that of the evil one; the enemy who constantly speaks to us, shouts into our ears, nags our hearts, fills our minds with information – most of the times false, fake and foul. Just as we see in the first reading of this Sunday, where the first parents are deceived by the voice of the serpent, so do we run the risk of being hijacked by the enemy, who is “prowling round like a roaring lion” as would explain St. Peter in his letter.

The danger that subsists in the of the voice of enemy is its overlay; it is so superimposed that it looks good, sweet, acceptable, real, caring, practical and functional. But it takes the Holy Spirit to understand that it only looks so… and it is truly not so! The first parents were deceived… they thought it was care, it was concern, it was an intention to help that the serpent expressed. They failed to notice that the evil one was merely attempting to pit them against their loving Creator, making them suspect the “Will of God” for them.

In our personal and social experience too, we hear a lot of voices – such that whisper: ‘after all you can do this’, ‘who is really going to know about it’, ‘who said this is not good’, ‘what if you can do it and still get away with it’… and so on. How late is it going to be, before we realise that those are the voices of the evil one, voices of the enemy, voices of the serpent who wants us to remain as far away from our Creator as possible, hidden from the absolute Truth and Goodness.

The voice of death: Another set of voices to be careful about is that which comes from the principle of death, death which is the most powerful instrument within the domain of the evil one! Death in itself is not evil… of course it is not. But when it is handled by the evil one, it becomes a treacherous instrument of fear, of meaninglessness, and above all of negativity.

There is so much negativity spread all over in today’s world. If we are not careful we would listen to those voices that speak from the negative corners of darkness and succumb to death. St. Paul warns us of it in the second reading today, speaking to the Romans. He speaks of the death that reigns over people, instead of allowing our Saviour to reign over us. When fear rules over us, when ego determines everything that we do, when insensitivity blinds our perspectives… we are in the reign of death. This is what Pope Benedict XIV often warned us of – the culture of death that prevails in the world of today.

The culture of death makes us look at every one else as an object to be used, competition to be won over, a disturbance to be avoided, a foe to be curbed, a danger to be terminated… that is negativity. At all levels we see this at work in the society: persons who look at their own siblings and family members that way, sections of people looking at “other” sections of persons that way, nations looking at other nations, and the whole world looking at “some” in that manner… if we are not careful we will fall for these voices, saying they are after all true and factual.

The Voice of God: We have to really train ourselves to single out the Voice of God from the cacophonic noises that the world is house to. That is a Lenten task – because it is an exercise of spiritual discipline, a an of surrender to the Spirit, who alone can help us do that. Jesus in the desert, does exactly that – surrenders himself to the Spirit of the Lord and arms himself with the Word of God, in order to win over the misleading voices that tempted him and listen to that One Voice of God: this is my beloved Son!

The Voice of God is liberating – it liberates me from egoism, from competitions and from pride of proving myself. The Voice of God is life-giving – it makes me look at possibilities and not problems, positivities and not pitfalls, persons and not threats! The Voice of God is lifting – it lifts my spirit and does not make me feel like I am a failure, lifts my attention from the material needs to the transcendental truths, lifts my priorities from self-centred satisfactions to a holistic and integral fulfilment.

The Voice of God is the Word of God, which is the lamp to our feet, the light on our way, the guide to our steps. It guides us through life and death, towards a life that is eternal – the Words of eternal life!

Conversion: Together renewing our lives in the Lord

Lent as a Time of Conversion

THE WORD IN LENT 2026 – SATURDAY AFTER ASH WEDNESDAY

February 21 – Isaiah 58: 9-14; Luke 5: 27-32   

Lent as a time of conversion – proposing that leitmotif for this season, the Holy Father reflects on three key movements we are called to. The first two, listening and fasting, the Word called us to reflect on, the past two days. Today the Word inspires us on the third term – together.

We see the Saviour coming in search of the sick, the sinners, the needy and the broken. Jesus declares that unequivocally – I have not come to call the virtuous, but the sinners to repentance; he presents himself as the breach-mender, the Restorer of the ruins, that Isaiah speaks of in the first reading. The season of lent is here to bring us together, to walk together, to progress together, to grow together mindful of this call that the Lord has open for us: Follow me!

If we wish to say “yes” to that call, we need to ensure these three dispositions within us – that of mending our ways, that of lending our hands, and that of tending towards the life, a life to the full.

To follow the Lord is to mend our ways – an ample period of 6 weeks is right here before us to launch ourselves on this mission. We can certainly at the end of this spiritual exercise find ourselves at least a few yards closer to being truly God’s delight.

To follow the Lord is to lend our hands – to our brothers and sisters in need; to free the yoke of those who feel trapped, to feed those who hunger for acceptance, affection and compassion, to relieve those who feel oppressed by the inhuman conditions that are justified by the cultures of today – that is the way we can become commensals in the Reign of the Lord.

To follow the Lord is to tend towards life – it is to see life, to give life, to promote life and not prejudices and condemnations. We are not called to sit on judgement of the others, as to who is going to hell and who not, instead we are called to make our way to the Lord, towards that Absolute Life, by living our lives to the full, and making of our lives a sacred offering to the Lord.

True lent is when we come to appreciate the absolute value and significance of the life that God has gifted us, and enhance and enrich it towards making it reflect the fullness of God – that is salvation, and that is the paschal mystery

Conversion: Fasting that opens us to see God

Lent as a Time of Conversion

THE WORD IN LENT 2026 - FRIDAY AFTER ASH WEDNESDAY

February 20 – Isaiah 58: 1-9; Matthew 9: 14-15 

Lent as a time of conversion - that is our project this Lent proposed by our Holy Father. Yesterday we reflected upon this conversion in terms of listening, listening enough to know what God wants of us. Today we are called to reflect in terms of fasting… that is the second term that Pope Leo presents to us – listening and fasting.

The obvious question is, what kind of a fasting are we speaking about here? Certainly, we are not out to destroy the traditional value and spiritual merit that lies in fasting from food and beverage, or abstinence from meat and other goodies of life. What we are up to here, is what Isaiah intends to do in the first reading today, what Jesus wishes to do in the Gospel passage today – perspectivise the fasting we undertake.

Fasting is not deprivation: First and foremost, fasting should not be centred around an argument of “deprivation” – I deprive myself of something: the breakfast, meat, another meal or things of that sort. If so, at the centre of it all I find myself who is deprived of all these! That is going to blind me further to so many points of focus that Lent wishes to offer me.

Fasting is an opening to see: Fasting is not centred around me, but it opens my mind, my heart, my eyes and my life to the other – in more than one way – making me feel the pinch of not having something, making me look at the need of the other, making me aware of what I have always been blessed to have, making me look at those for whom what I leave out is not an option at all, making me sense in some way the struggles and sufferings of the other. More than being deprivation, it becomes a setting aside. Setting aside things, that I could share with others; setting aside my own feelings, that I may listen to the other; setting aside myself, so that I can make space for the other.

Fasting is an opening to see God: If fasting does not lead to me see God present with me, that fasting has not spiritual meaning - it is merely dieting or disciplining! As Jesus says, when I feel the need to get in touch with the Divine, I feel the need for fasting; fasting gets me back into communion with the Lord. In getting me see the other and the need of the other, fasting makes me see God and what God wants to communicate to me.

This is the perspective that Pope Leo offers too – he calls for a fasting from harmful words. He says: this lent be kind and watch your words; disarm your language and avoid hard words and rash judgements; fast from slander and from speaking ill of others! That is indeed a fasting that opens us to see God, God who is in others, and God who is with us and within us

Conversion: Listening enough to Choose God

Lent as a Time of Conversion

THE WORD IN LENT 2026 - THURSDAY AFTER ASH WEDNESDAY

February 19 - Deuteronomy 30: 15-20; Luke 9: 22-25 

Lent as a time of conversion - that is a fundamental perspective that guides us on our ongoing journey of faith. It is not that this is the first time we celebrate a season of lent, not is it going to end with this season; we are familiar to this atmosphere, at times we even look forward to it. It is indeed a beautiful season, a season that lets us get in touch with our real inner selves, with humility and truth. But we have to beware of a tendency that can lead us to complacency and compromise...warns the Word today.  

How do we understand conversion - that is where the key lies. Conversion is choosing God... says Moses today in the book of Deuteronomy. We have before us the possibilities, the choices, the alternatives - some of them lucrative, successful, glittering and glimmering; others not so attractive, difficult, demanding, boring, at times even discouraging. But on what basis do we choose? What is attractive or what is right? That which is lucrative or the one which is just? The ones which are sensational and splashy or that which is sincere? Death or life? The evil or God?

How can we choose what we ought to? We need to see... the light that shines from the Lord makes us see what to choose. We need to hear... the voice that comes from the Lord helps us orient ourselves towards the right. We need to listen... listen enough to choose God, and God  alone - that is true conversion. 

At times we choose that which goes against what God wants of us - worse still, we choose so and we believe we have after all made the right choice. Other unfortunate times, we choose what we ought not to, and we do our best to justify the choice we made, in spite of knowing that we made a mistake in that choice. Here, it is not only that we do not see, we do not want to see! It is not only that we do not hear, we just do not want to listen... Listening to the Lord, leads us to conversion; in fact, conversion is listening enough to choose God above all.