Today on EWTN the homily began with a little story. A mom was afraid to let her little 1st grader walk to school without her, but he insisted, so she asked a neighbor to follow him, discretely, at a distance. The neighbor agreed, wanting to get some exercise walking with her toddler. So the little boy and his neighbor friend walked every day to school followed by the mom’s friend and her toddler… Finally the little boy’s friend asked, "Have you seen that lady and that little kid following us every day?" He said, "Yes, that’s my mom’s friend Shirley Goodnest and her little girl Marcy. Mom is afraid for my safety so she makes me pray every night: ‘Shirley Goodnest and Marcy will follow me all the days of my life’; so I guess I better get used to it" … Today is Good Shepherd Sunday. All the churches in the Catholic world will be reading from the Gospel of Saint John chapter 10 where Jesus says… "the shepherd calls his sheep by name, and leads them…the sheep follow him, because they recognize his voice…I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved." The pharisees didn’t understand these words of Jesus… they did not listen to the shepherd’s voice. We really can’t hear God’s voice either because our ears aren’t "tuned" to hear it. Right now I have windows open and I can hear birds calling and singing, but I also hear traffic, a clock ticking, the neighbor’s air conditioner humming… In the silence of a Sunday morning, human noises and nature noises. God is speaking way down in the center of our beings. CS Lewis and Fulton Sheen both talked about the chaos of the noise and not letting God’s voice go unheard… Find the silence. I often tell people "Go into a church" where I look for the tabernacle and stare at it. Look at it and try to "center on the tabernacle." There, in the silence and concentration, recollection… find the silence where we will hear the Master’s voice.
Today the mother duck still sits on her nest. We’ve become a little more bold, hanging laundry, dragging palm tree branches out of the back yard to the garbage cans, but we are still not walking on the pathway right in front of her nest. She is quite a patient mom. I know I’ve talked about this before… but my goodness, watching this gestation process right under our noses has been interesting. She sits, fluffs, turns, counts eggs, turns the eggs, fluffs, sits. Repeat. It’s supposed to take 28 to 30 days… Well we found the nest out there on our return from cruising; it’s been 21 days. Any day now girl! Let us see those little yellow chicks!!!! May you all feel the patience of waiting and gently wait and listen. God bless you.