Our theme introduces us in the ideal picture of the first community to fetch from it new reference points for our particular personal and community situations. The "perseverance in listening" constitutes the first of the four fidelities exposed by the three summaries of the Acts of the Apostles: 2, 42-47; 4, 32-35; 5, 12-16. These summaries are the apostolica vivendi forma of the origin. They call back to our mind the ideal gospel life which the primitive Church witnesses to. The first contains elements described by the other two, namely the quadruple fidelity, lived in assiduity and perseverance:

"These (the early Christian community) remained faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood, to the breaking of bread and to the Prayers…  and all who shared the faith owned everything in common …  Each day with one heart they regularly went to the temple,  but met in their houses for the breaking of bread. They shared their food gladly and generously, they praised God and were looked up to by everyone. Day by day God added to their community those destined to be saved" (Acts,2, 42-47).

There are four types of fidelity which appear as ideal (and they actually are) to be kept in view and to be realized day after day, but in the development of the text, Luke shows also the praxis, with its lights and shadows 1. Just a global glance shows their recurrence in the text of Luke.

The teaching of the apostles, or the Word (cfr Acts 8,6; 10,22; 11,20-26; 13, 7 and fol.) 14,1; 15,7; 16,14; 17, 11-12; 22,15).

Brotherhood (cfr 2,46-47; 4,32-35).

Breaking of bread (2,46-47; 29, 7-12).

Prayer (1,23-25; 6,6: 13.3; 14,23; 12,5,12).

The subjects of this quadruple perseverance "are those who have welcomed the Word", (2,41), later  called "sharers of faith" and, finally, Church (5,11). These four types of perseverance show that the life of the community is founded on the Word that creates the community (brotherhood), and on the Eucharist that extends in life and turns it into a living cult (prayer). The first one regards the teaching of the apostles, that is the instruction following the first proclamation. The assiduity to the  teaching of the apostles is the first essential characteristic of the community; it is the condition to understand and to live the faith, as well as to be a community in and of the Lord. It is evident that the community life begins with the Word and with the confession of faith. In this picture we do not see first of all works and apostolic organisations to be carried on. He is the foundation and everything starts from Him, the Living, to be listened to and to be made present. The gratuity of being together is born from this foundation, from the very strong and joyful awareness that the Living makes one thing out of many. This presence of the Living translates itself into the awareness of the testimony which is due to it before the world.

The teaching of the apostles, namely the Word

The assiduity to listening2, the first aspect of this apostolica forma vivendi, is expressed with "they were attached to the Didaché", that is, to the Word  -memory of the apostles who listened, kept in their heart,  transmitted and realized (cfr Acts 11,20: the first tentative to actualize the faith in the Hellenistic culture!).  The assiduity to this listening founds again3 constantly the faith in Jesus the Lord, dead and risen, operating among them. The faithful, in their listening, call to mind the words and gestures of Jesus;  they read the Old Testament in the light of Jesus, to understand in the light of the Scriptures and of Jesus their own present and the history they were living in (cfr Acts 17, 11-12: Paul in Berea gives a lectio divina. He explains the Old Testament in the light of Jesus). The testament of Paul to the elders of Ephesus witnesses that this listening to the Word (cfr Acts 20,20) is characterised:

-          by the exhortation, an encouragement and not a sterile prejudice;

-          by the instruction, a deepening, a desire of growth and of solidarity, to prevent oneself from being shaken by any wind of doctrine (Eph 4,14);

-          repeated, that is systematic so that it may be deep and complete, and may give the reason of "one's own hope". The Word must find a home in us (Col 3,16); just like Christ, it must feel at home in our hearts (Eph 3,17). John assures us that to remain in the Word is to remain in Jesus (Jo 15,7).

The listening, in its radical and rooted priority, recalls the house founded on the rock, as the result of a listening that has become life and flesh, a "doing the Word" by becoming Word (Mt. 7, 24.27).

Pay attention to how you listen (Lk 18);
the possible levels of listening and its challenges

 In his first work, keeping in mind the parable of the sower, contrary to Mark who writes "Take notice of what you are hearing" (Mk 4,24), Luke writes "Take care how you listen" (Lk 8,18). The quality of listening, the how, is very important. We can live, as human experience also shows us, different levels of listening, each with particular challenges and possibilities.

First of all the sensitivity, as an emotive superficial state of soul, that may touch the human vulnerability, with related reactions: escape, defence. If it is predominant, our listening is superficial, ego-centred and functional. Not being able to reach our depth, the Word gets lost and vanishes. It falls as if on marble.

Habit, a moth which lets us believe that we know the Word and its exigencies. It is the temptation of the man who is used to listen to the Word, so much used that he has ready-made answers. In this case, there is but an intellectual listening which does not touch the heart and does not save. The habit makes a person superficial. The experience of Paul in Ephesus is meaningful in this regard: he teaches that the superficial listening, the craving of listening (Acts 17,21) forbids the opening of the heart to the Word and to conversion. The people of Athens refused the word of Paul because the "hearing with one's own ears" was for them  a "pleasant pastime", and not an attitude of listening to and of opening one's heart.

      Personal expectations. This third challenge is very frequent. It verifies when we approach the Word with expectations and worries for which, somehow, we have determined the answer. When they prevail, our listening is selective: we take whatever we like and coincides with our ideas, thus we get scandalised of any recall to conversion (cfr Jer 42).

      Finally, the room in my heart,  which is the room where decisions become ripe, the space of sincere availability and authentic freedom. Man listens with his heart. Solomon's prayer, with which God is pleased, is, "Give your servant a docile heart … " (1, Kings 3,9). But "the heart is more devious than any other thing and is depraved; who can pierce its secrets?" (Jr 17,9).

      Here is, then, David's prayer, "God, create in me a clean heart" (Psalm 51,10).

The Biblical faith is a spirituality of listening

Luke, in proposing the importance of listening, does not invent anything new about the Biblical spirituality, because it is, essentially, a spirituality of listening4. The passionate cry of God to his people is, "Listen Israel" (Dt 6, 3.4). God does not reveal himself through visions, but lets himself be known through the voice. There is only a voice on the mountain where God has leads them (Dt 4,10-12). Only his shoulders can be seen, namely the footprint of his passing through life and history (Ex 33,32). God does not allow us to see him, but we can listen to him. God does not reveal himself through images, but through the listening of a "You" to another "you" which creates  dialogue and communion to make history. Any listening, therefore, demands confidence in the one who speaks. Thus the listening is an open ever new experience, and its content needs the realisation of what we have listened to if we want to understand it.

No listening can ever exist without a response and, therefore, without a dynamic responsibility. The vision, instead, is something closed and static. Because of this difficult way, namely the listening, Israel has always given in to the temptation of idolatry, because the idols are there to be contemplated and not to be listened to. They do not make us fall into crisis and do not build history. To have a God near us, a God who could be manipulated because it does not cause crises  and does not speak, was the great temptation of Israel (cfr Psalm 115, 4-8). It is also the drama of spiritual life when it is based on the "practices to be fulfilled", rather than on the relation with a You who speaks to me and to whom I owe obedience! The drama that has characterised the life of Paul in his Pharisaic experience, when he pretended to know everything, to carry the will of God in his pocket, a will to fulfil and to see that it is fulfilled.(cfr Phil 3,6), just like a reference book of well defined rules.

The specific and complementary face of our listening

The listening is a commandment of life (Dt 6,4-6): it is a true cult, pleasing to God (Psalm 40, 7), that builds a person of prayer par excellence and transforms life into liturgy. "You have not wanted sacrifice and offering, but have perforated my ears". The cult par excellence is the attentive listening to God, a unique possibility to welcome his good will towards us and to realise it fully. Listening is an ever newer "event", "If you listen to my voice today" … "Yahweh made this covenant not with our ancestors, but with us, with all of us alive here today" (Dt4,1; 5,3). Jesus of Nazareth confirms the binding value of this today of the Word to whom we need to open our ear, without any prejudice (Lk 3,21).

There is a deep difference, then, between "to hear" and to listen! To hear means to receive more or less clear messages, which may please or displease us, but they do not touch our life. In listening I become aware, in this moment of life situation, of what I feel, thus I listen to it in order to change life.

The unavoidable condition of listening:
"Be silent and listen, Israel"

In the Biblical sense, silence recalls the desert (midnar), where everything is silent, where a person finds himself alone with himself, without interference. But the midbar  contains the root of dabar-word. The silence is imagined like a desert, from where the Word is born and where it is received and it is listened to. "When we love, we want to listen to the other alone, without stranger voices to disturb us" (M. Delbrel).

In the silence-desert the Word has lived its preparation-gestation (Lk3,2). Here God leads us to a listening that renews the heart and changes life (Hos 1,16). This place or condition allows God to reveal his project. "There was silence in heaven for about half an hour" Rev 8,1). God manifests himself, and the heaven remains silent. Only like this the listening to the mystery of God is possible. The listening is born from an available, attentive, welcoming silence. Only then the Word incarnates itself, "When peaceful silence lay over all … down from the heaven leapt your all-powerful Word … " (Wisdom 18,14).

Listening and life:
".. Israel, if only you would listen to me! (Psalm 81, 9)

It is clear: listening is the way of life (Dt 30 15-20). In the Greek language to say listening (akoe) is to say obedience (Hypakoe = a submissive listening) is the same thing! The following (akoloutheo) is born from this relation. Ours is nothing but the obedience of faith. "… it is in that way faith comes, from hearing, and that means hearing the Word of God" (Rom 10,17). But hope also is born from listening and not from vision, " Nobody goes on hoping for something which is already visible" Rom 8,24). This is why faith and hope will no longer be there when we shall see God. The listening is obedience to God whom we believe to be solid, faithful, unable to  tell lies or to betray. This does not flow from a rational or intellectual understanding , but through the knowledge of a heart that listens because it loves and sets on a journey. This is how the old Fathers answered those who complained of not understanding, "Practise! Live what you have understood and thus you will not fail to understand the rest". An advise which actualises Ex 19,8 in its original Hebrew: "Whatever Yahweh has said, we will do" without knowing in advance what he would tell them. If you act because you love and trust, you will not fail to understand! And vice versa: the more you understand, the more you listen and the more you live by doing! Ex 24,7 is even more evident and binding: "We shall do everything that Yahweh has said; we shall obey (listen)". 

Israel, figure of the faithful, does not propose to God preliminary conditions. They trust, accepting the risk of such a gift. "We shall do it", they say, even before listening to him and knowing what He will say. Martin Buber paraphrases thus, "We shall do and we shall listen", that is: "we shall do in order to listen". Beyond the underlining we can attribute to these sentences, it is evident that in the Scripture the invitation of "listening in order to act" (Dt 5,27 and "to act in order to listen" (Ex 24,9) are present. The listening demands of turning itself into praxis, and this is the vital dimension in which the listening is situated, matures, develops and changes life deeply. Jesus mints a beatitude of this attitude, saying, "More blessed still are those who hear the word of God and keep it"! (Lk 11,28; 8,19, where the terms listening and perseverance recur.

In Psalm 119 it is evident that the Law5, which for us corresponds to the Word, is not an abstract code, but a privileged way of entering the relationship with the Lord. This is why the Law-Word is listened to, studied, observed, safeguarded, discerned, remembered, loved, followed and tasted6 …

This shows the experience and the prayer of the Psalmist, "I find my delight in your will; I do not forget your word"; "I run the way of your commandments for you have given me freedom of heart";  "Your judgements are my song where I live in exile" (Psalm 119, 16  32-54).

Love, a unique and privileged way to persevere in listening

Love is the privileged way for a deep listening to the Word. Listening involves the whole person in his totality, "with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength" (Dt 6,4-5). To love God and to listen to him are the two sides of the same medal, or almost two formulations of the same reality. You love, therefore, you listen to, you listen because you love: The masters of the Rabbinical exegesis ask themselves: if it is with all the heart, why to add the soul and the strength? And they answer themselves: with all your soul means "even if He snatches away my soul", namely up to martyrdom; while the additive "with all my strength" means "with all my possessions". Nothing of what you are and of what you have is stranger to the involving and transforming listening to Him who speaks.

This is a stimulating interpretation because it roots us in the experience of a deep, persevering and faithful listening which catches the whole person. God is to be loved with all our being (heart), but also with all our material goods (strength), up to the total oblation of life (soul).

The Pauline example

We grasp this resonance in the NT, through the example of Paul, keeping in view some references to his letters and to the Acts of the Apostles. The life of Paul is wholly pervaded by a total and persevering listening (=obedience)  to the One who loved him (Gal 2,20), and sent him with the grace of winning the obedience of faith among all the nations (Rom 1,5). From the day in which Christ blocked his way to Damascus (acts 9, 1 ….),  and Paul asked him "What do you want me to do?", to which God answered, "The God of our ancestors has chosen you to know his will, to see the Upright One and to hear his own voice speaking, because you are to be his witness before all humanity, testifying to what you have seen and heard" (Acts 22, 15). Paul set on his journey, in a persevering, loving listening to God and to his brothers in the mission, up to the supreme gift of his life. The listened Word became lived Word, rather incarnated Word.

With all your heart; "I have served the Lord in all humility …. " (Acts 20, 19. 27); "Life to me, of course, is Christ" (1,21). Can't we say that this is a "chaste listening", in the sense of a concentrated listening, because it is without any diverting or dispersing interference?

With all your strength, "I have never asked anyone for money or clothes" (Acts 20, 33); "What were once my assets I now through Christ Jesus count as losses" (Phil 3,7). Can't we define it "poor listening to self " in order to be available for God?

With all your soul: "And now you see me on my way to Jerusalem in captivity to the Spirit; I have no idea of what will happen to me there… I am ready not only to be caught, but to die in Jerusalem in the name of Jesus the Lord" (Acts 20, 22); "Even if my blood is to be shed on the sacrifice and offering of your faith, I am happy and rejoice with all of you" (Phil 2,13). Can't we define this "obedient listening", able to give to God in the mission one's own freedom to determine oneself?

The example of Paul, one of the greatest figures of the Acts of the Apostles,  animator and builder of the community, through his experience of vital, free and de-centred listening, leads us "to understand" and "to taste" our religious life as an icon of the persevering and faithful listening to Him who has seized us. If our love for God turns us into  persons who listen, which mean faith of obedience to Him much more than to the rules, then our life, filled in with his Word that purifies and saves, becomes a living communication of Him who has seized us. It follows that our being persons who listen to the Word of God, will make our Gospel adventure, our following the Lord, to be an enthusiastic proposal of life for others. They would see, in fact, that the Word enlightens our face and dilates our heart. In the Acts of the Apostles we read that the Lord added other persons every day: he was, indeed, the first animator of vocations!

An honest reflection on our concrete reality

In our Institutes often we let ourselves be taken by the worry of "doing" the works of our primitive charisms. We live with a considerable commitment. But, do we sufficiently listen to the Word of God that reaches us, today, from the Bible, but also from the new questions on the sense which history rises and which, for us, is the word of God? Do we put together the Word-Gospel and history? The assiduity of the first community to the teaching of the apostles was an assiduity of listening to the Word-Person whom the apostles had "seen" and "touched", translating and transmitting it to the present. Let us not forget that the Gospels are a catechesis of the Christian community, from where the Gospel was born and where it goes back to.

The listening as an on going formation

The listening, according to Luke and the Deuteronomy, demands a continuous commitment, in assiduity. Fragmented notions bring nothing, rather they disperse and makes us superficial and mediocre. We understand that one can never be master of listening. This makes us faithful disciples, till death, when we shall pronounce our last "yes" in the last listening, "The Spirit and the Bride say, "Come!" Let everyone who listens answer, "Come!" (Rev. 22, 17). The attitude of listening can coincide with what today we call on going formation, or on going renewal of life, which takes its root in the listening to the Word.  The success of the first community is linked, first of all, to an assiduity (= on going formation) whose first step is an attentive and loving listening to the Word, together and within life, while waiting for the Lord Jesus and in his testimony.

"Understood like this, formation is no longer a pedagogic time of preparation to the vows, but a theological way of thinking the consecrated life itself" (Starting afresh from Christ, No. 15).

"Oh Church in Europe, do enter the new millennium with the Book of the Gospel! Let every faithful welcome the exhortation of the council to welcome "the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus" (Phil 3,8), through a frequent reading of the divine Scriptures. In fact, "Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ".  Let the Holy Bible continue to be a treasure for the Church and for every Christian.: in an attentive study of the Word, we shall find nourishment and strength to fulfil our mission every day.

Let us keep this Book in our hands! Let us accept it from the hands of the Lord who keeps on offering it to us through his Church (cfr Rev 10,8). Let us devour it (cfr Rev 10,9), so that it may become the life of our life. Let us taste it to its very depth: it will give us troubles, but also plenty of joy,  because it is as sweet as honey (cfr Rev 10, 9.10). We shall be filled with hope and enabled to communicate it to every man and woman whom we meet on our way" (Ecclesia in Europa).

*A Biblist

1.       Cfr Acts 6,11, the episode of Ananias and Sapphira , where it is clear that there were trials to be overcome also in the original community. We note also that in v.11, after unmasking the falsity, the Christian community is called Church for the first time. It is the Church that we build in building the truth.

2.       " … these remained faithful to the teaching of the apostles" (Cfr Acts 2,42). The Word of God is the first source of the Christian spirituality. It nourishes the personal relationship with the living God, it projects the light of Wisdom in our life, and urges the disciples to carry the announcement of salvation to our brothers and sisters. Forming ourselves in the school of the Word means to acquire a certain supernatural instinct which allows us to renew our mind "so that we may discern for ourselves what the will of God is, what is good, acceptable and mature" (Rom 12.2). Every consecrated person, a disciple because of the gift of the Spirit, is enabled to see the history of salvation in the daily events; to pronounce the word of the beatitudes in a world challenged by suffering and injustices; to exercise  those ministries of compassion and consolation for our humanity wounded by the evil of sin. To educate ourselves to the listening of Wisdom means, finally, to follow the way of the Master along his journey towards Jerusalem in the Easter perspective, learning to spend and to consume ourselves, overcoming the temptation of fearing death" (XLIX USMI National Assembly, in te listening to Wisdom. The way of the disciples. 2002).

3.        This psalm lets us think of the beatitude (=happiness) of him who meditates on God's Law, night and day, always. If this assiduity is missing, we may forget it.

4.       To be the people of God, called to live in the received freedom, could make one think to be a    privileged people. If there is any privilege, it is nothing but that of knowing that this is the God of all, and not only their own; secondly,  that of fulfilling all that other people, not knowing this God, don't know what is good and pleasing to him:  "Israel, blessed are we; what pleases God has been revealed to us! (Ba 4,4). The role played by the state of being "conditioned", "If you listen", and by the concrete welcome of the Lord's will: "all together the people answered, saying, "All the words Yahweh has spoken we will carry out" (cfr Ex 24,3) shows the hinge element of Israel's being.

5.       Filippa Castronovo, Dimensione universale alla chiamata, in: Rogate, No.1. January-February 2001, page 7 and following.

6.       A very interesting and interiorising exercise of prayer is Psalm 119, by substituting the name of Jesus to the terms Law, Decree, Testimonies. The relation between Law and the Word, who is Jesus to be listened to and loved, is then enlightened. For instance , "I run the way of your Jesus (instead if "your commandment") for you have given me freedom of heart.