Sr. Molly Fernandes –
Pope Francis in his Message for World Communications Day 2022 asks the world of communication to learn to listen after having been invited in his last message(2021) to come and see, or rather ongoing and seeing!
Come and see for yourself if I am sounding weird! An often spoken language. Sounds good! Everything that glitters isn’t gold. For in the advanced techno-savvy world, we see more morphed images which indeed look real and when heard, than the ardent reality! What rather would pave way for the dire truth and reality is ‘to be with the persons, the situation and listen personally, listen with attention, listen with empathy, listen with the ear of your heart!. This is what the Pontiff, wants us to do and invites us to inculcate ‘the habit of listening’.
The wounds of the pandemic are still not healed. We are still recuperating! Nonetheless, the pandemic has affected and wounded everyone, and everyone needs to be heard and comforted. Listening is also essential for good information. The search for truth begins with listening. So does witnessing through the means of social media or communication! Every dialogue, every relationship begins with listening. For this reason, in order to grow, even professionally, as communicators, we need to relearn to listen a lot, reminds the Pope.
Jesus himself asks us to pay attention to how we listen (cf. Lk 8:18). For the Pontiff says it loud “listening with the ear of your heart”. This is why Jesus calls his disciples to evaluate the quality of their listening. “Take heed then how you hear” (Lk 8:18): this is what he exhorts them to do after recounting the parable of the sower, making it understood that it is not enough simply to listen, but that it is necessary to listen well. Only those who receive the word with an “honest and good” heart and keep it faithfully bear the fruit of life and salvation (cf. Lk 8:15).
It is only by paying attention to whom we listen, to what we listen, and to how we listen that we can grow in the art of communicating, the heart of which is not a theory or a technique, but the “openness of heart that makes closeness possible” (cf. Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 171).To be able to truly listen requires courage, and a free and open heart, without prejudice.
In his message the Pope cites examples of saints for us to imitate and practice the art of listening, saying: We all have ears, but many times even those with perfect hearing are unable to hear another person. In fact, there is an interior deafness worse than the physical one. Indeed, listening concerns the whole person, not just the sense of hearing. The true seat of listening is the heart. Though he was very young, King Solomon proved himself wise because he asked the Lord to grant him a “listening heart” (cf. 1 Kings 3:9). Saint Augustine used to encourage listening with the heart ( corde audire), to receive words not outwardly through the ears, but spiritually in our hearts: “Do not have your heart in your ears, but your ears in your heart”. Saint Francis of Assisi exhorted his brothers to “incline the ear of the heart”.
The Pope reminds us that, the lack of listening, which we experience so often in daily life, is unfortunately also evident in public life, where, instead of listening to each other, we often “talk past one another”. In reality, in many dialogues we do not communicate at all. We are simply waiting for the other person to finish speaking in order to impose our point of view.
The word Listen or Listening has another word in it, i.e: ‘list’. This word indicates that one need to be ready for a list of things to hear/listen. The list may or can be long or short! So, listening is therefore the first indispensable ingredient of dialogue and good communication. Communication does not take place if listening has not taken place, and there is no good journalism without the ability to listen.
Do not shoo of anyone while talking. This is very clearly seen or noticed in the Centre and State Assembly sessions, other conferences, community meetings, etc, if I am aloud to say. If only one was allowed to speak and the others listened with the ear of the heart, the wrong that is happening would have been prevented. The damaged done to the Earth, the environment, the climate, lives and things. Therefore, it is essential to know how to listen, to be ready to change one’s mind, to modify one’s initial assumptions and let go and let live!
To have the “apostolate of the ear” – a Synodal church, to listen before speaking and to what others say is the most important thing, as the Apostle James exhorts: “Let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak” (1:19). Freely giving some of our own time to listen to people is the first act of charity. In order to walk together, the need to listen to the voices of the people without imposing is the hard reality.
Billye Brim says, “There’s an ‘ear’ in the middle of your heart.” Could we have little patience to listen with the ear of the heart to the stories who wants to relate to us moreover listen to my own dear self who has a story to tell?