Lenten campaign 2026
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Often in prayer we will want Jesus to speak to us plainly, using audible words that we can hear. When we don't hear those words, we may be tempted to give-up on prayer, or to think that God isn't listening.
In fact, we often blame God in such situations, thinking that God is the one who isn't doing anything, while we are trying our best to do what God asks of us.
The reality is that God speaks to us in a much quieter tone than we may be comfortable with.
Knocking softly at the door of our hearts
Jesus himself describes his mode of operation in the book of Revelation:
Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. (Revelation 3:20)
Typically when someone is knocking at the door, we will hear it and rush towards it. However, God's knocking is not very loud.
Dom Prosper Guéranger writes in his Liturgical Year, "Now during the season of Advent our Lord knocks at the door of all men's hearts, at one time so forcibly, that they must needs notice him, at another so softly that it requires attention to know that Jesus is asking admission. He comes to ask them if they have room for him for he wishes to be born in their house."
Guéranger reminds us that Jesus is certainly knocking at our door, but it may be that he is knocking very "softly," requiring our full attention.
Fr. Boniface Hicks explains the necessity for silence in a post he wrote on Benedictine Spirituality:
The silence of Christian monasticism is not merely an asceticism of self-control or emptying our desires, but rather a posture of listening to a God who speaks. We do not silence ourselves for the sake of being silent, but rather for the sake of hearing more clearly. Our silence is not a matter of isolating ourselves, but rather of opening ourselves. It is relational. Silence is the necessary pre-condition for hearing God and encountering Him in prayer and in life.
What Fr. Boniface is explaining is how we need more silence in our lives, both exterior and interior, to hear God's voice and to notice his knocking.
We all need to examine our daily lives and consider how much we pause our activities, set down our phone and just listen to God. It may be uncomfortable, but precisely in that space we can open the door of our heart.
Jesus is knocking, but are we silent enough to hear it?
