Morning Prayer: “Today, listen to the voice of God.”
Most of us don’t receive locutions. Teresa of Ávila herself said they are rare, unpredictable, and never something a person can manufacture. So if “listening” doesn’t usually mean hearing words, what does it mean? It means cultivating the kind of interior posture in which God can be sensed. It means attending to the movements of the heart rather than the drama of the ears. It means noticing the subtle shifts in conscience, clarity, peace, unease, or invitation that rise up when we become still enough for grace to surface. Listening to God is less like overhearing a sentence and more like recognizing a presence. It is the quiet awareness that something in you is being drawn toward mercy, or nudged toward truth, or steadied toward courage. It is the moment when Scripture suddenly feels addressed to you . It is the unexpected tenderness that interrupts irritation. It is the clarity that arrives after prayer, not during it. Locutions are extraordinary. But listening is ordinary, dail...