THOUGHTS OF A MONK

“His Master’s Voice”

Zc 7:4-11; 1Tim 6:11b-16; Jn 10:22-38
September 10, 2006

For as long as I can remember I have loved classical music. I don’t know how that came about exactly but I do know that my father had a very large collection of records and even though the vast majority of those records were popular music, he did have some that were classical. In those days he had records that were 33 rpms, 45 ers and 78s. Hundreds of 78s. And for some reason the 78s intrigued me the most. One of the most memorable labels was on the RCA Victor recordings.  There was a dog, with its ear cocked toward the sounding horn on a wind-up Victrola from which the sounds emerged and the slogan was “His Master’s Voice.” Of course, the message was very simple; the sound was so real that it made the dog think that it was really hearing His Master’s Voice and not just a recording of it.  After all, the dog knew the voice of his master. 

And what are the words that Jesus speaks to us today in St. John’s Gospel?  “They listen to my voice… I know them and they follow me… no one will ever snatch them from my hand.”  Now with 38 puppies on the ground and possibly 12 more on the way, I’ll admit that I’ve got dogs on the brain, but as I pondered this Gospel passage I’ve come to see a message there that the dogs have helped me to understand.  When the dog responds to the voice of his master, the dog is not responding to a message that it understands because master and dog are speaking the same language. With my dog Goldi, I know that we do not speak the same language but she knows my voice and responds to it. A wag once said that even if a dog spoke to us in English, we still would not know what it was saying, it thinks differently, and expresses itself differently. So the communication link isn’t about speaking the same language, it is about knowing the voice. 

“And no one will ever snatch them from my hand.” Again, when a human being and a canine bond, that bond is obvious, and when a choice is before the dog, it will respond to its master’s voice. Although the Gospel speaks of sheep, I do not think that the dog analogy is off the mark. This is the same image that the Gospel is conveying to us, when we really know our master’s voice and listen to it and follow it, then the bond is secure and we will not be pulled away from it.

Sometimes we hear of people waiting to get a message from God. They have to make a decision about some aspect of their life and they are waiting to hear from God on the subject. They may be expecting to hear a voice speaking to them in English telling them in terms that they can easily understand exactly what they are supposed to do.  And yet God and humans are different beings and we can’t expect the communication between two different beings to be the same as it would be between two human beings. Dogs and humans communicate but that communication is different than communication between human beings. Likewise, God and human beings communicate but that communication is different than communication between human beings, even though God’s word may very well come to us through another human being.

How can we know God’s voice? What are the communication links between God and human beings? In the broadest sense, God speaks to us through all of creation, since God is the creator of all things, as St. Paul reminded Timothy. One can also think of the symbol of an omnipresent God as being the Holy Spirit, which we say is everywhere present and filling all things. It is another way of saying that God is in all things for God created all things. Thus God can communicate to us through all things and beings.  My dog may speak to me reminding me of my need to get out of my self-focus and it may come at the very moment when I least want to turn my attention to another—in this case the dog. Rocks may speak to us, a rockslide is a message not to build a home in that location; floods can say the same thing.  If we don’t listen, it may be at our own peril. Our bodies speak to us, and they are the temple of God, telling us to slow down, or illness telling us to change our habits.  Our brothers and sisters speak to us reminding us of how we are treating others or ourselves. Our doctors speak to us, giving us information that is for our benefit, but if we ignore it, is it just the doctor we are ignoring, or is it a message from God we are brushing off? The message also can be an inner sense of ill ease at some action we are about to take, or have just taken.

As a monk I have to face the question of how well I am living my profession.  It is not uncommon to hear someone ask, if you are a contemplative monk, how is it that you seem to spend so much time working and not in contemplation and prayer. On September 23rd we have scheduled a day of prayer on the very subject of “Praying in a Busy World.” The goal is to offer suggestions about how to make sure that prayer is part of everyone’s life, no matter how busy a person may be. Part of that discussion may be about our own struggles with that very challenge.  And yet, in meditating on this Gospel, I keep coming back to the idea of prayer as a relationship with God, a bond that persists 24/7 not just at particular times or during particular tasks or work or even in silence.  It is something that infuses one’s being and is expressed at all times in one’s life. It is nourished by special times of quiet contemplation, but it is lived at all times. This is how we come to understand the idea of praying without ceasing. When I am feeding puppies, am I in a relationship with God or is God out of the picture? When I am exercising my dog, and myself, bicycling down and up our road, God is there too. When I am eating, or cooking, or studying, or singing, or cleaning my room, or in conversation with a brother or sister, or driving the car, God is there. If God is there, that is, if I am aware of God’s presence, as Zachariah pointed out to the Israelites, then that affects the way I do those things.  It affects the way I interact with others.  If I am ever mindful of God’s presence, it shows in the way I behave. 

So our bond to our master Jesus is secure when we listen to God’s voice and follow it, then we cannot be snatched away. But when we hear that voice of God, from whatever source, and yet our response is to ignore or reject it, we are then being snatched away by our own will and revealing that the bond with God was not really there.

My dog Goldi is always reminding me what that bond should look like.  Would that I listen to the message, and hear the Master’s voice.

Glory be to Jesus Christ!