There are two points in this gospel story that I would like to reflect on this morning. The first is the command "Listen to Him." Listening is not easy. Indeed it might be said, "It's an art." Looking around this morning, there are just a few of you (not very many) who might remember a song of perhaps forty years ago. "Sounds of Silence," .... Simon and Garfunkle.... and there was a phrase there, "...people hearing without listening,".... "People hearing without listening." How true that is! Would this scenario be in any way familiar to you? You talk. I appear to listen, but really what I am doing is I am thinking to myself what I will say, how MY story, MY experience, is so much more interesting I can't wait to tell it. I can't wait for you to shut up. Or, I'm hearing you, but what I'm hearing are the words, the arguments that you are making so that I can make a stronger argument in return. That's not listening. It's hearing without listening.

To really listen.... In other words, to hear with the heart, means to risk, to open yourself to another person, to really get involved with that other person. Listening to Him, to Jesus, means really opening our hearts to Him. And that can be risky, as we make our journey of Lenten conversion, as we are invited to change our lives. Why risky? Well, His words may point towards a path that is stoney, hard, steep, a path that we don't really want to take.

Listen to Him. Hear His voice. Where is that voice coming from? Not from a cloud! First and foremost, we hear that voice clearly in Sacred Scripture. At the end of the first reading, we acclaimed, "The word of the Lord.... The word of the Lord." But, the word of the Lord, Sacred Scripture, read or proclaimed, not just as some story, some event that happened about two thousand years ago... three thousand....four thousand.... whatever.... No, but as something that affects me today, something that has a relevant message for the way I am going to live my Christian life today, relevant to this journey of continual conversion that we are all traveling.

There are, as some of you certainly know, some modern cars that have what is called a "GPS System" in them, Global Positioning Satellite System in the car. Couple of years back, I was a passenger in one of those cars and it was really quite amazing. A little screen lights up. You punch in the address of the place you want to go to, a map comes up on the screen and it scrolls down as you move along so you know exactly where you are at every moment. The arrow points the way you want to go. Not only that, it talks to you. If you are on the freeway, for example, it will tell you, "Move over to your right lane. You are taking the next exit." It will tell you, "Turn left.... Turn right." And, then, when you have come to your destination, it will very politely tell you, "You have arrived.

We might say that our Sacred Scriptures are our GPS System for our spiritual life. They, first of all, give us a map of where we are going, where this journey should be taking us. And they give us, not only a map, but they give us the actual voice of Jesus, telling us, "Turn right. Turn left. Go straight." And hopefully, one day, will tell us, "You have arrived." So, turn it on. Turn the system on. Use it, given us by God to direct us on this great journey of life, this journey of conversion, of change that we are all involved in.

Yes. His voice is heard in Sacred Scripture, heard in many, many other ways, heard from the people all around us, heard from world events that are happening, heard from the wonderful world of nature that God has created for us to hear His voice. And that has been always wonderfully expressed for me in a poem by an Irish poet, Joseph Mary Plunkett. (It has to be an Irish poet, of course.) I would like to quote for you:

Yes. The great wonders of nature, speaking to us wonderfully and powerfully of God and His majesty, bring us to praise and glorify His name.

The second point that occurred to me in reading this gospel today was to ask myself the question, "Why did He go up the mountain?" And it wasn't just because it was there. Well, in the verse today Matthew doesn't tell us, but in the version of the same incident that Luke gives us, he tells us that Jesus went up the mountain to pray.... went up the mountain to pray. You see, as you will recall, He was on that final journey to Jerusalem to His passion and His death. He needed to reflect on this. He needed to pray about it, to talk to the Father about it, to discover if this was really the will of His Father for Him. And what He got in His prayer was an extraordinary, extraordinary affirmation. "This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased." ....Isn't that wonderful? From God, "This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased." And with that affirmation, He was able to continue His journey, even though it was to lead to His suffering and His death.

Our Christian life is one of continuous conversion, continuous change that is very often described as "a journey." In this conversion journey, we need affirmation. We need encouragement because changing a way of life, changing a whole value system is not easy. So, we pray about it. We talk to God about it. We express our hesitations, our fears, our hopes, our dreams for this journey that we are making. That is how Jesus faced His journey.

And I believe that today we are being invited, in this gospel, to face our journey in this very same way, to pray about it. Now, what we need for ourselves we should surely be ready to give others: affirmation, encouragement. It is so easy, so very easy, to be negative, to see the faults in others, to condemn the weaknesses. But I suggest to you that again today we are being invited to be positive, to lift people up, to affirm them, to encourage them, as they too make this wonderful journey of conversion, of change of life, of deepening our commitment to the Christian way of life. Let us assure each other, assure each other, that we are all, all of us, beloved children of God, that God is saying to each and every one of us today, "You.... You are My beloved child with whom I am well pleased."