Listen to learn!

John 6:44-51

Jesus said to the crowd: ‘No one can come to me unless he is drawn by the Father who sent me, and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets: They will all be taught by God, and Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me. Not that anybody has seen the Father, except the one who comes from God: he has seen the Father. I tell you most solemnly, everybody who believes has eternal life. ‘I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the desert and they are dead; but this is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that a man may eat it and not die. I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.’

Food for thought!

Again Jesus makes one of those revelations of his: "They will all be taught by God; Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me." It means that the Father teaches and we listen; it means that God continues to teach us, using Jesus (yesterday), using Phillip (1st Reading).

It is said that God gave us two ears and one mouth so we may listen more and talk less. We do well then to learn to listen. This is the first and necessary condition for being disciple of Jesus. The words, student, pupil, disciple and learner mean basically the same. All represent the same fact: willingness to  learn. “If you love to hear, you will receive, and if you listen, you will be wise”, says Ben Sira, a Hebrew scholar.

A student, a pupil, a disciple and a learner with a shut mind is a contradiction in terms.  As long we live we must adopt a learning attitude. Learning is not a one time event; it is a life long journey leading the learner deeper and deeper into truths. The learner who feels that he has nothing more to learn he has not even begun to learn.

In today's first reading we find a good learner, a eunuch, who was an officer at the court of the queen of Ethiopia. He was a man of influence, a chief treasurer. Yet, he was ignorant of Scripture. And as they say, ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Jesus. The first reading says:

The angel of the Lord spoke to Philip saying, ‘Be ready to set out at noon along the road that goes from Jerusalem down to Gaza, the desert road.’ So he set off on his journey. Now it happened that an Ethiopian had been on pilgrimage to Jerusalem; he was a eunuch and an officer at the court of the kandake, or queen, of Ethiopia, and was in fact her chief treasurer. He was now on his way home; and as he sat in his chariot he was reading the prophet Isaiah. The Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go up and meet that chariot.’ When Philip ran up, he heard him reading Isaiah the prophet and asked, ‘Do you understand what you are reading?’ ‘How can I’ he replied ‘unless I have someone to guide me?’ So he invited Philip to get in and sit by his side. Now the passage of scripture he was reading was this: Like a sheep that is led to the slaughter-house, like a lamb that is dumb in front of its shearers, like these he never opens his mouth. He has been humiliated and has no one to defend him. Who will ever talk about his descendants, since his life on earth has been cut short! The eunuch turned to Philip and said, ‘Tell me, is the prophet referring to himself or someone else?’ Starting, therefore, with this text of scripture Philip proceeded to explain the Good News of Jesus to him. (Acts 8:26-40).