This week at Mass we’re reading Paul’s 1st Letter to the Thessalonians, which may be the earliest writing of the New Testament. On Friday, we leave Matthew’s gospel and Monday we start Luke’s Gospel weekdays. 

We repeat these gospel readings every year. Every other year we repeat the same Old Testament or New Testament readings. Why keep reading them? 

Because God reveals himself to us gradually, day by day. The scriptures are a privileged place where God speaks St. Paul says today to the Thessalonians: “We thank God unceasingly, that, in receiving the word of God from hearing us, you received it not as the word of men, but as it truly is, the word of God, which is now at work in you who believe.”

God is at work in our readings. “They make the voice of the Holy Spirit sound again and again in the words of the prophets and apostles…The Father who is in heaven comes lovingly to meet his children and talk with them,” the Constitution on Divine Revelation says. (DV 21,22) “The Lord be with you,” we say, announcing the gospel. Jesus is with us now, speaking to us here and now in our readings..

How should we hear and read God’s word? Some say by reading and listening deeply. Deep listening, deep reading is more than listening and reading for facts. “Give us 20 minutes we’ll give you the world,” one news stations says. and for 20 minutes we hear facts. We browse online, looking for facts, for news, for entertainment. The worldwide web is awash with facts. That kind of reading and listening, some say, endangers our capacity for deep listening and deep reading, for contemplation.     

We need to listen deeply and read the scriptures deeply. Prophets like Ezechiel say they devoured God’s word. They ate it, chewed on it, digested it. That’s because God feeds us little by little. We learn little by little. We absorb little by little. We are slow learners. 

Deep reading not only applies to the scriptures we read, it applies also to the prayers we say and saints, like St. Augustine, St. John the Baptist, we celebrate. September 1st, Pope Francis asked that we celebrate a Day of Creation, and from September 1st to October 4, the Feast of Francis of Assisi, to celebrate with other Christians a Season of Creation. We need to see creation and other issues prayerfully in a deeper way than a scientific way. 

Our prayerful deep reading and listening leads to more than facts. It leads to what God wishes to say, and we never know what that will be. “When you open your sails to the Holy Spirit, you never know on what shores you will land,” St. Jerome said.

“The word of God is now at work in you who believe.”