God's Coming in a "Dense Cloud"

In today’s first reading, Exodus 19: 1-2,9-11, 16-20b,  we read:  “I am coming to you in a dense cloud, so that when the people hear me speaking with you, they may always have faith in you also.”  Is it not true that most days God comes to us in “dense clouds?”  Only through faith, do we see and hear God. Many times,  we don’t see him and  don’t hear his voice.  Concerning His speaking to the crowd in parables, Jesus says to His disciples in today’s Gospel (Matthew 13: 10:17):  “This is why I speak to them in parables, because they look but do not see and hear but do not listen or understand.”

Is that not true of you and me at times; namely that 1) we look at people but really do not see their beauty and goodness as a child of God and 2) that we hear what they are saying but are not really listening or understanding? Our eyes can be blinded by our prejudices or by whatever preoccupies us. Past hurts that we have suffered from them can cause us to automatically turn them off or prompt us to walk away from them.  Things we heard about them from others can also blind us to their goodness, their beauty, their authentic person-hood.  Our ears hear but we may not be truly listening or understanding anything they are saying, though we may pretend to be listening and understanding.

However, there are also times when the Lord reveals “the mysteries of the Kingdom” through these very people we have blocked out. Our eyes and ears are opened by the Lord’s forgiveness and our own. We see differently. We truly listen, putting our personal issues aside, and understand. O, the grace of Almighty God—each one of us grows into being “hearing, listening, understanding” individuals. Christ in us increases and the ego-self decreases (cf.John 3:30).