Sunday, March 29, 2015

The Gospel in Many Voices


On this Palm Sunday of the Lord’s Passion (as on Good Friday), the Gospel is ordinarily proclaimed in a multiplicity of speakers’ parts.  For most of my life, I have added my voice to what the “crowd” has to say:  “Crucify Him!  Crucify Him!”  In my eleven years as a Priest, however, it has always been my liturgical office and personal joy to speak in the person of Christ.  Today is the first day that I must assume the role of narrator of Christ’s suffering and death, because the principal celebrant at Queen of Peace---Fr. John Eze---properly speaks in the voice of the Lord (and with an African accent!).

In my meditations on this blog (now numbering forty), I have referred often---but usually only in passing---to this much beloved Nigerian Priest who has shepherded my flock with such care during the days leading up to, and now following, my jaw surgery.  He has literally been my voice as Pastor for over two months.  Beyond the obvious challenges of seeing another person performing tasks that are so dear to my heart for people who are so dear to my heart, I have consistently been overwhelmed---even to tears---at the depths of God’s goodness in sending to my people and to me such a good shepherd.  I have come to know and love the Lord’s voice in his.

To sit side by side with Fr. John in the sanctuary, hear him proclaim and preach the Gospel, stand near him during the Eucharistic prayer, and receive his updates each day at the rectory we share on the parishioners he has visited---all of these privileged stances have given me a new insight into the fathomless humility, extravagant generosity, and (dare I say) reckless boldness of God to entrust His saving words and deeds to each of us as members of His Body.  Out of infinite love, Jesus Christ actually lets us bear His voice and extend His gestures of saving charity.

In a conversation, it is so tempting simply to want to say one’s own part.  We often look to seize the moment when our interlocutor pauses so that we can interject ourselves into the opening.  To grant the other enough receptive silence to hear a voice beyond one’s own is a life-long discipline involving an on-going dying to self.   In the case of the trusting silence of God, it is a miracle:  He really allows us speak through Him and with Him and in Him---not just to (or at) Him! 

In our modern age, of course, the microphone has amplified the Priest’s voice to the point of distorting it by exaggeration.  The electronic pseudo “vox Dei” too easily pretends to fill the church, all the while risking overwhelming by its one-sidedness the prayer of those not similarly equipped.  It is an etymological paradox that the word “microphone” literally means “small sound.”    Overcoming the passivity of hearing that this device abets, we can be more receptive to the “still, small voice” of God (cf. 1 Kings 19:11-13).


For all of the rich liturgies of this Holy Week in which the Lord sacramentally speaks to us the words of everlasting life, we must prepare for each---and follow up on each---in contemplative silence.  When I was ordained, I never knew that a plastic mouth splint would become a personal sacramental, disposing me to receive the graces of Passiontide with more sensitive ears and a more open heart.  It has also been so spiritually fruitful for me to play the “narrator” of the Lord’s “mercies-through-trials” each Lenten day on this blog.  But to begin to hear the ineffable harmony of my soundless sharing of Christ’s words through another’s voice is to receive on earth something of the very reverberations of the Crucified and Risen Lord of Heaven:  “Today you will be with Me in Paradise.”     

No comments:

Post a Comment