Lent 2C25: "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity" Simone Weil (Luke 9:28-36; 16 March 2025)

A reflection on Luke 9:28-36, written and spoken by Kieran J. O'Mahony OSA. 

Gentle piano music to close the meditation

Transcript

John’s Lane

16 March 2025

Transfiguration in Luke 9:28-36

Listen to him!

Welcome

A phrase in today’s Gospel speaks directly to each one of us: This is my son, the chosen one. Listen to him. We gather to hear the word of God and to listen to God speak to us through the Holy Readings. We do it every Sunday and, while it may sound easy, in our world, listening is hard work, both externally and internally. It is hard externally: there’s some much coming at us, news, music, phone calls, zoom meeting, emails, texts and WhatsApp. It is also hard internally. 

Topic

To listen, to hear someone one, to attend to another person, requires a kind of conscious change of gear.

Steps

Once upon a time, I took part in a Marriage Encounter weekend. The purposes of Marriage Encounter was to help couples communicate better and there was an adapted version, which accommodated also unmarried people. A helpful expression they had in those days was: “listening with your engine running.” It meant that instead of really attending to the other person, you were waiting for a gap or a pause in the conversation to get your opinion in. I guess we all do our listening, to some degree, with our engines running. The goal of the weekend was to get people to turn off their engines and just pay attention, to attend to, to be present to the other person, to what he or she was saying and perhaps not saying. The difference is great. A good example which many people experience is going to a counsellor. Counsellors are trained to listen and it is therapeutic when someone listens to you deeply, helping you to recognise what is happening in your life. It is also a mark of respect. Attending fully to people we love is at the same time hard work, therapeutic and joyful. It is life-affirming to feel you have been heard and understood. 

Simone Weil, French philosopher and mystic, reflected long on the practice of attention. In a brief description, she once wrote: 

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

Let me repeat that. Writing a little more expansively, she taught: 

Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer. If we turn our mind toward the good, it is impossible that little by little the whole soul will not be attracted thereto in spite of itself.

In Weil’s view, attention is a radical openness to reality, unclouded by ego or preconceived notions. It is bound to be hard work but also therapeutic. As in the story of Mary and Martha, it is the one thing necessary, as we all know in our better moments. 

It is not only hard work and therapeutic, it is also joyful to take up the invitation of today’s Gospel: listen to him, that is to God speaking to us through Jesus. How do you, do I pay attention to what God is saying to me, to us? 

Brian Davies, the English philosopher and Dominican priest once asked the question: where is the word of God to be found. He gave a nuanced response, as you would expect from an eminent philosopher: The Word of God is to be found chiefly in the Scriptures. In other words, yes, in the Scriptures but not only. We sense the presence of God very much in nature. Like Abraham, we can look up to the stars of the heavens and stand in awe. I’m reminded of some delightful lines from RS Thomas, reflecting a walk in the moors

There were no prayers said. But stillness

Of the heart’s passion — that was praise

Enough.

God is speaks to us not only on nature, but in the inner voice of conscience, in the experience of love (whoever lives in love lives in God), in the special moments of birth and death, in music and song, and so on. 

But, as Brian Davies also held, chiefly in Scripture. We read the Word of God every Sunday and every Sunday we are called to listen. One of the life-giving movements in our time is the practice of praying with Scripture — lectio divina or Sacred Reading. This can be done on our own, of course, but is done most richly with a small group or 8 or 10 people.  In the different responses of all, collectively we become aware of the richness of the Word of God and its life-giving potential for ourselves. 

Such deep listening is also immensely practical. The synodal pathway as a whole is really an exercise in attention, in Simone Weil’s sense. Collectively, we are contemplating the future of the community of faith, the church. Collectively, we are invited to be part of the evolving future. Collectively, we listen to Scripture and we listen to each other. It is the conviction of the Pope Francis that if we listen to each other with respect and love, the Spirit of God will be revealed and how we are to be in future will become clear. There is a repeated appeal in the Book of Revelation: “Listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.” This is exactly what we hope we are doing.  

Conclusion

It is not an accident that the fundamental prayer of Judaism is the Shem’a Yisrael: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”  (Deuteronomy 6:4-5)

Simply as human beings, we are all “hearers”, listening out for a potential “word” from the mysterious creator. Even more, as believers, we are all “hearers of the word”, knowing that God has indeed spoken — in creation, in the prophets, in Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Spirit. Let us have the courage to take up the invitation of today’s Gospel: This is my son, the chosen one. Listen to him.