Ty Tompson: "The Voice of the Lord"

As the Josephinum Choir prepares to go on its Italian pilgrimage this summer, I have tried to pick up a little Italian to get around a bit better over there. Since I just finished three straight semesters of Spanish, it gets a little bit jumbled together in my head. But I have had a little success thanks to the priest I’m living with who has been teaching me some of the phrases he knows (and ragging on me for how I don’t drink coffee and how I’ll never survive in Italy). I’ve also been looking around for CDs or movies that have a little Italian in them. The Godfather series didn’t help much, but they were still fun to watch. I figure if you just move your hands a lot and talk loud enough, they can figure out what you mean.

I did come across a CD that had audio clips of various addresses and talks by Pope John Paul II in Italian. When I heard his voice on the CD, it was a very strange feeling for me. It has been a long time since I had heard that voice in it was younger and stronger. His voice just seemed to make the text take on an urgent and commanding tone, even if it was simply the text of a well-known psalm that he was reading. Just by the way he was speaking, although in a language I don’t even know, he had a way to generate an emotional response. As I reflected on the power that voice had, I remembered the summer of two years ago when I was taking Hebrew classes. A remarkable phrase came up in one of the chapters. The way of saying the word “obey” in Hebrew is to say “shama el-col,” literally, “listen to the voice.” In the Hebrew Old Testament, there is no distinction between the two. Every time someone listens to the voice of God, he obeys.

That’s really an idealistic view of things. Certainly we don’t obey every voice we hear. But the way our late Holy Father’s voice struck me when I heard it reminded me that when we do hear the voice of God, we shouldn’t avoid it or make excuses or find a way around it: we should follow it. As he grew older, Pope John Paul II’s voice weakened greatly. Towards the end of his life, he gradually lost his ability to speak almost entirely. As the Vicar of Christ Our Lord on earth, it pained the Faithful to see their Pope in such a condition. Our hearts broke as he came to his window to greet the crowds gathered in prayer below, and he could not even vocalize a blessing. Reflecting upon that, I have learned a great lesson. The Lord’s voice isn’t always blasting at full volume. Elijah encountered God in the silence of a gentle breeze. We didn’t hear the voice of the Holy Father, but he communicated to us what was in his heart. God might burst through the clouds or give us a prophetic dream or take over the earbuds to our mp3 player. But He will make His Divine Will known to each of us in a mysterious and fulfilling way. Our part is to listen for that voice of the Lord speaking to us in unexpected yet unassuming ways. Whether we hear God’s voice calling us to avoid sin, to grow in virtue, or to explore a vocation as a priest or religious, we are obligated to listen and follow.