In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Now, the boy Samuel was serving Yahweh in the presence of Eli; in those days it was
rare for Yahweh to speak; visions were uncommon.
One day, it happened that Eli was lying down in his room.
His eyes were beginning to grow dim; he could no longer see.
The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying in Yahweh's sanctuary,
where the ark of God was, when Yahweh called, 'Samuel!
Samuel!'
He answered, 'Here I am,' and, running to Eli, he said, 'Here I am, as you called me.'
Eli said, 'I did not call.
Go back and lie down.'
So he went and lay down.
And again Yahweh called, 'Samuel! Samuel!'
He got up and went to Eli and said, 'Here I am, as you called me.'
He replied, 'I did not call, my son; go back and lie down.'
As yet, Samuel had no knowledge of Yahweh and the word of Yahweh had not yet been revealed to him.
Again Yahweh called, the third time.
He got up and went to Eli and said, 'Here I am, as you called me.'
Eli then understood that Yahweh was calling the child, and he said to Samuel, 'Go and
lie down, and if someone calls say, "Speak, Yahweh; for your servant is listening."
' So Samuel went and lay down in his place.
Yahweh then came and stood by, calling as he had done before,
'Samuel! Samuel!'
Samuel answered, 'Speak, Yahweh; for your servant is listening.'
1 Samuel 3:1-10
Some time ago we met a very educated woman, she is an economist.
She loved to read and know a lot of things.
She was a very knowledgeable person.
But one day she told us something that left us thinking and that today serves us to explain
the following.
She lamented that God had stopped speaking to man, the way He did in the verses of the
Bible, that is, in direct communication with man, with the prophets.
We ask you brothers and sisters who are listening to us, what do you think is the problem?
Is it really that God no longer speaks to man or is it that man has stopped listening to his God?
And in your particular case, what do you think is your problem?
That God does not speak to you or that you are not listening to Him?
We hope that we delve into this and do not tell ourselves ever again that "God doesn't hear me."
Let's continue analyzing the verses that we have read from Samuel in which, as we said,
the Word of God shows us something tremendously important.
Let us remember that the Lord called Samuel several times, which shows us that God does
speak, He does call.
In this case, the problem was that the boy did not realize that it was God calling him.
In our case, the reason why we do not listen to God is because we are distracted with our
minds involved in so many things, we worry about so many things, for example: what we
lack, our needs, and many other distractions.
And we don't look at the Glory of God.
This is a big problem that many of us have and this is the characteristic of being a child in the faith.
In faith, there are people who have the faith of a child, there are people who have the
faith of an adolescent and there are people who have the faith of an adult.
The Word of God says that Samuel was a child.
The children, that is, those who have just been born in the faith, are very restless
people who still do not deeply understand the things of God.
That makes it easier for them to be struck by what the world offers.
They feel more attracted to their problems.
Another place where the Word of God explains to us very well is in the Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13).
Our hearts are like barren soil, the Word falls into them and bears no fruit.
Only if we open our hearts and dispose them to listen to God will we bear that fruit that
God expects us to bear.
From this, we can conclude clearly, that in order to learn to hear the voice of God, we
must meet certain conditions.
Leave the distraction.
We realize that many people go to Mass and do a lot of things, such as looking at their
fingernails, answering their cell phones, falling asleep, talking to the person next
to them, and especially at the time of Communion, accentuating the conversation.
When people are receiving Communion, everyone talks.
That is, we are not in a listening attitude.
We ask you, are you in an attitude of listening in your life?
Is your life willing to listen to Jesus?
Because God is speaking to you but you are not realizing it.
Also, the problem is that we want God to say only what we want to hear.
As the humans that we are, we do not like God to correct us, to exhort us.
We must understand that there is a difference between prayers.
There are those prayers that are full of faith and those prayers that are not.
There are effective prayers and those that are not.
We want to teach you on this day how to make an effective prayer, by understanding how
the prayer is that is not effective.
Prayer that is not effective are the prayers that we like to make of this type for example:
"Lord give me this"
"Lord I need this"
"Help me"
"Lord change this problem"
"Lord do this"
that is to say, they are prayers in which only a lot of things are requested.
And we do it because in truth our relationship with God is so poor that we believe that God
only has to give us things.
And perhaps you will tell us, brothers and sisters, that the word of God says to ask,
and it is true.
But what we have to ask for are the graces that we need to get closer to Him.
The function of prayer is not a way to ask only for the material, but it must be a way
to ask for our spiritual needs,
such as faith,
perseverance, strength, humility, love and more.
An effective prayer is the prayer that we make when we are suffering a problem or some
difficult circumstance in our lives and we bend our knees, and we ask God for a guide
to know what to do.
This prayer will be effective because it shows that you are fully trusting in God, that your
behavior will depend on what God tells you to do.
So, no matter what the problem is: infidelity, cancer, money, or some other type of tribulation,
the man or woman matures in faith, bends their knees, raises their hands and asks God what to do.
Are you saying that?
Are we doing that?
If you're not doing it, then it's time to start.
So we want to make it clear that the difference between an effective prayer and a prayer that
is not effective is to stop questioning ourselves about the "why" of things and to focus more
on the "what for," on the benefit that can be obtained in the circumstance we are going through.
Because in this way we are recognizing that every situation of our lives has a function,
that will push us to look for a goal.
If we limit ourselves only to seeking reasons, we are not resolving anything.
The truth is that many times the reasons we seek are very simple.
For example
Why is there infidelity in the home?
Because one of the two spouses has stopped looking at the other spouse.
Why do I have financial problems?
Because you have not put your economy in the hands of God.
Why do I get sick?
Because human beings, by nature, we deteriorate physically.
These are the simplest and most logical reasons.
Therefore, the most important point will be knowing what God wants.
Let's go back to the verses of Samuel.
Verse 7 also teaches us something very important:
"Samuel had no knowledge of Yahweh."
It is evident that a person will hardly learn to hear the voice of God if he does not have knowledge of God.
The Word of God tells us in 1 Corinthians 2:14 "The natural person has no room for the
gifts of God's Spirit; to him they are folly; he cannot recognize them, because their value
can be assessed only in the Spirit."
From this, we can conclude that to enter into the knowledge of God, we must first have an
intimate relationship with Him, that is, we will only know Him when we have learned to
recognize His voice.
For example, have you ever been called by a person who starts talking to you and whose
voice you don't recognize, but that person speaks to you in a friendly tone?
And during that conversation you have to interrupt this person to say "I'm sorry, but I don't
know who you are."
This means that due to the lack of intimacy with this person it is difficult for us to
recognize this person's voice.
Therefore, due to the lack of intimacy with God, it is difficult for us to hear His voice.
This is a problem that many of us have.
The absence of intimacy with God prevents us from recognizing that He is speaking to
us, that God is calling us.
So making a brief summary of this teaching of what we have been developing so far, so
that it remains engraved in our minds, is that the first problem we have is that we
are too distracted to listen to God.
We are very restless, that is, we have to calm down.
Second, from what these last verses of the Bible teach us, we have recognized that we
really do not know God and that we need to deepen that intimacy.
That is to say as Father Ignacio Larrañaga would say in one of his phrases that we love:
"If you pray a lot, there will be a lot of God in you.
If you pray little, there will be little God in you.
But if you pray nothing, nothing of God will be in you."
So, we ask you on this day, how much of God is there in you?
Much, little or nothing, that will depend on how much you pray.
Because the person who seeks to be more intimate with God will be more willing to hear His voice.
That is, the person will seek to be with Him more, will have more time to dedicate to God,
and thus be able to recognize His voice.
And suddenly God would say something to this person and this person would immediately recognize God.
In the Word of God it says: "When he has brought out all those that are his, he goes ahead
of them, and the sheep follow because they know his voice."
John 10:4.
This tells us that we are hearing many voices.
Human voices and spiritual voices.
The devil also speaks.
And the Word says that we learn to recognize the voice of Jesus because we know Him.
That is, we will have the spiritual capacity to distinguish what is from God.
There are many people who tell us "God has told me this" and we tell him to put it into
practice and then he will know if it really comes from God.
Because if we believe that God has told us something, we put it into practice
and it does not bear fruit, we can be sure that the message did not come from God.
And this is because sometimes we make God say what we want to hear from Him.
Let's go back to the story of Samuel in the second part of verse 7 where it says
"Samuel had no knowledge of Yahweh and the word of Yahweh had not yet been revealed to him."
Therefore, the reason why Samuel, a child of faith, does not know God and therefore
does not recognize Him when He calls him, is because he has not yet been taught His word.
And here the question is dear brother and sister, do you know the word of God?
There are more than 3700 promises in the Bible, and what Catholic people sometimes don't know
is that when you know a biblical verse, you can ask God to fulfill it.
Because the Word of God says in the book of Numbers chapter 23 verse 19
"God is no human being that he should lie, no child of Adam to change his mind.
Is it his to say and not to do, is it his to speak and not fulfill?"
It also is mentioned in the book of 2 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 20:
"For in him is found the Yes to all God's promises
and therefore it is 'through him' that we answer 'Amen' to
give praise to God."
All the promises are fulfilled with Christ.
For this reason, the Lord, from John chapter 14 to John chapter 16 repeats to us seven
times that we ask.
And He does it seven times, for perfection, the number of God.
We are sure that many of you did not know this and that is the problem; Let's remember
what God says through the prophet Hosea in chapter 4 verse 6
"My People perish for lack of knowledge."
And this is also reflected in another prophet, in Samuel.
The lack of proper knowledge and not knowing the scriptures ends up diminishing our faith.
When we are reading the Bible and begin to study it, faith comes to our hearts and this
faith is what pushes us because it is not static, but dynamic, it moves the human being to be.
Therefore, perhaps many of us do not have faith, because we do not know the Word of God.
Many of us walk in darkness, in the midst of not knowing what to do, of uncertainty,
of ignorance, when the knowledge of God is within our reach.
This is the darkness that prevents us from knowing where to go.
But, the Word is light and a torch and if I have light, my path will be illuminated.
God, therefore, does not allow darkness in the one who knows the Word and He illuminates the way to go.
Dear brothers and sisters, observe how these two verses of the Bible, from the book of Matthew
and the book of Samuel, can help to deeply establish the need to know the Word of God.
Let's remember what we said from the beginning, we must listen to the voice of God and practice,
do, execute what He tells us.
We can only talk to God through prayer, but we hear Him through reading His Word.
This is how the spiritual life works.
That's why, when someone approaches us because he doesn't know how to deal with a problem,
we tell him to pray and read the Bible.
Many tell us, "Brother or sister, you always give the same advice to everyone."
Of course, because there is the solution.
People expect to be given a recipe, for some reason people expect something difficult from God.
Some time ago we asked a brother who made these pilgrimages why or for what reason he did it.
And he told us that it was for God to listen to him.
But the truth is that God listens to you without you doing that
He does it for the simple reason that you are His son.
As Psalms 40 verse 1 says
"In Yahweh I put all my hope, he leaned towards me and heard my cry."
God extends His ear to the cry of our lips, dear brothers and sisters.
Hallelujah!
Finally, what we must learn is how to recognize when God speaks.
And how does God speak?
God always speaks to us but sometimes we are so distracted that we don't realize it.
"God speaks first in one way, and then in another, although we do not realize it.
In dreams and in night-visions, when slumber has settled on humanity and people are asleep in bed,
he speaks in someone's ear, frightens him with apparitions to turn him from what
he is doing and to put an end to his pride.
And thus he preserves his soul from the abyss, his life from passing down the Canal."
Job 33:14-18
God wants to reveal Himself and relate to each one of us and this implies that we must
understand how He wants to communicate with each one of us.
He will look for the way that is easier for you to understand.
In our experience of faith, we have learned that God can speak in many ways.
But this is something that we will describe in a future video.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.