During Holy week I noticed that I was getting way too obsessed with the details of the all the special liturgies and that I wasn't listening to God . I repented and for many days prayed that God would Grant me the grace to hear from - and listen to God.
So Wednesday at
Taize (our Wednesday night Eucharist) Michael one of our
subdeacons was setting up for the service and I stopped him from setting up the
Gospelbook. It was the proper reading according to the liturgical calender but I had prepared my sermon from the daily office of prayer for that day . Michael said that he was kind of looking forward to me preaching on the "Walk to
Emmaus" which was the liturgical calendar reading for that day. I told Michael that I could preach on
Emmaus but not now. And I
repeated that I wanted him to read from the daily
office of prayer. He would do so with no
dissension.
As Michael was about to read the Gospel that I instructed him to I felt compelled to stop him and tell him (Michael) to read the proper Gospel for the day. Michael looked perplexed when I told him so I repeated myself and he said "Praise the Lord". I didn't know why he said that and didn't much care.
After reading the gospel Michael leaned over to me and said "Fr Rich please pray because I think I have the word tonight". I knew with absolutely no doubt that he was supposed to preach. I knew that it was God speaking to me and I was
freakin out just a bit. I blessed Michael to preach and
when he arrived at the
pulpit he proceeded to pull a sermon notes from his pocket. He would tell how God prompted him to take a
sermon that he wrote a year ago with him to church this night. But he felt that I had to tell him to preach and that he wasn't to tell me. So he wasn't sure what was going to happen.
When he pulled those notes out of his pocket I wanted to cry . I know that God was testing me to see if I would listen. Last week I wouldn't have listened because that kind of thing wouldn't have fit into my schedule or agenda.
God does indeed speak to us but we need to constantly pray away our own crud that gets in the way.
Go Big
