Benedict Wrote:

"Listen, listen.  It will break your heart, but it will also give you a heart.  And it will give you more, it will give you life.  Only Love is strong enough to hold all the pain in the world.  Love will listen.  If you aren’t listening, you aren’t loving.”

I read a story once about a boy named Paul who was just eleven when his father took him to meet his great-aunt Margaret in the nursing home, where she had been moved because of dementia.  During the visit, Aunt Margaret told Paul and his father stories that were 85 years old.  Stories that happened almost a century ago.  As she talked and talked, the father became concerned that the boy would grow restless and would not be polite hearing the countless…When I was a girl.

So he cut the visit short.  Going out to the car, the father tried to explain to his son about dementia, but the son, told the father to stop making excuses, Aunt Margaret was just remembering who she was.

During the season’s of the Christian year, with their regular patterns, we are remembering whose we are.  And we frame these stories through the telling of Christ’s story and our story in his.  And as we listen to each other, as we come together to share meals, we are listening and remembering who we are and whose we are. 

Listening then, is a Christian act, of helping others remember who they are.