The message of Pope Francis for the 56th World Day of Social Communications last May 2022 is worth reflecting on, as he spoke of listening with the ear of the heart. The word “listen,” according to the pope, “is decisive in the grammar of communication and a condition for genuine dialogue.”
Pope Francis spoke of listening as a dimension of love. “It is the action that allows God to reveal himself as the One who, by speaking, creates man and woman in his image, and by listening, recognizes them as his partners in dialogue. God loves humanity: that is why he addresses his word to them, and why he ‘inclines his ear’ to listen to them. On the contrary, human beings tend to flee the relationship, to turn their back and ‘close their ears’ so they do not have to listen. The refusal to listen often ends up turning into aggression towards the other, as it happened to those listening to the deacon Stephen who, covering their ears, all turned on him at once.” (cf. Acts 7:57)
“God always reveals himself by communicating freely; and on the other hand, man and woman are asked to tune in, to be willing to listen. The Lord explicitly calls the human person to a covenant of love, so that they can fully become what they are: the image and likeness of God in his capacity to listen, to welcome, to give space to others.”
He continued, “We all have ears, but many times even those with perfect hearing are unable to hear another person. In fact, there is an interior deafness worse than the physical one. Indeed, listening concerns the whole person, not just the sense of hearing. The true seat of listening is the heart. Though he was very young, King Solomon proved himself wise because he asked the Lord to grant him a ‘listening heart’ (cf. 1 Kings 3:9). Saint Augustine used to encourage listening with the heart (corde audire), to receive words not outwardly through the ears, but spiritually in our hearts: ‘Do not have your heart in your ears, but your ears in your heart.’ Saint Francis of Assisi exhorted his brothers to ‘incline the ear of the heart.’ ”
Pope Francis said that “the first type of listening to be rediscovered is listening to oneself, to one’s truest needs, those inscribed in each person’s inmost being. And we can only start by listening to what makes us unique in creation: the desire to be in relationship with others and with the Other [God].” To explain, the pope affirmed that “we are not made to live like [individual] atoms, but together.”
The Holy Father distinguished “a kind of hearing that is not really listening, but its opposite: eavesdropping.” In reality, “eavesdropping and spying, exploiting others for our own interests, is an ever-present temptation that nowadays seems to have become more acute in the age of social networks.” He added that “what specifically makes communication good and fully human is listening to the person in front of us, face to face, listening to the other person whom we approach with fair, confident, and honest openness.”
The pope spoke of listening as “the first indispensable ingredient of dialogue and good communication.” He affirmed that “communication does not take place if listening has not taken place, and there is no good journalism without the ability to listen. In order to provide solid, balanced, and complete information, it is necessary to listen for a long time. To recount an event or describe an experience in news reporting, it is essential to know how to listen, to be ready to change one’s mind, to modify one’s initial assumptions.” Pope Francis encouraged all to listen “to several voices… to exercise the art of discernment, which always appears as the ability to orient ourselves in a symphony of voices.”
To explain why we need to persevere in listening, Pope Francis mentioned the late Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, former Secretary of State of the Holy See, who used to “speak of the ‘martyrdom of patience’ needed to listen and be heard in negotiations with the most difficult parties, in order to obtain the greatest possible good in conditions of limited freedom.” He added, “Listening with this frame of mind — the wonder of the child in the awareness of an adult — is always enriching because there will always be something, however small, that I can learn from the other person and allow to bear fruit in my own life.”
The pope also spoke of the present threat of an “infodemic” or too much information, including false and misleading ones in digital and physical environments, caused by an accumulated mistrust in “official information.” Because of this, “the world of information is increasingly struggling to be credible and transparent.” He quoted the Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who reminds us that “the first service we owe to others in communion consists in listening to them. Whoever does not know how to listen to his brother or sister will soon no longer be able to listen to God either.”
In his message, Pope Francis pointed out the great importance of listening in pastoral activity which he calls the “apostolate of the ear” – to listen before speaking, as the Apostle James exhorts: “Let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak” (1:19). “Freely giving… our time to listen to people is the first act of charity” that encourages dialogue, and communitarian discernment in the pursuit of truth and genuine unity.
