3. Learning to listen.

Listening is both a state of mind and a condition of the heart. To truly listen is to strive to hear someone, offering them your full attention, sympathy, and compassion. It is an act of friendship, often requiring patience, and involves quieting your own thoughts and memories so as not to interrupt the speaker.

Listening means entering into the other person’s heart, knowing when to remain silent, refraining from expressing your own thoughts, and seeking to understand theirs instead. It involves following their train of thought, empathizing with their emotions, and journeying alongside their experiences of suffering. To listen is to allow the other person to unravel their thoughts, to explore their pain, to share in their joy, and to accompany them through their adventures.

Listening is a divine gift, a discovery of the language of silence. Silence itself embodies peace and serenity, a state of selflessness that approaches perfection.

Excerpt from the “Collection Volontaires de Dieu”, Father Louis-Marie Parent, O.M.I.

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