It is well known that St. Joan of Ark had a personal relationship with God. In Shaw’s play “Saint Joan” (premiering in 1923, three years after St. Joan of Arc’s canonization) the prince is annoyed because she hears God’s voice but he does not. Shaw made up this beautiful dialogue between them: “Oh, your voices, your voices,” he said, “Why don’t the voices come to me? I am king not you.” “They do come to you,” said Joan, “but you do not hear them. You have not sat in the field in the evening listening for them. When the angelus rings you cross yourself and have done with it; but if you prayed from your heart, and listened to the thrilling of the bells in the air after they stop ringing, you would hear the voices as well as I do.” St. Joan allowed herself to hear God’s voice.
So the question we should ask ourselves is: do I give myself the chance to hear God’s voice. Although the topic is quite broad, as there are many things that prevent us from hearing the voice of God, I wanted to briefly address one that is perhaps at the heart of the issue: we must silence our self-love, or rather, silence the disordered love of ourselves that makes so much noise, even to the point of silencing God.
St. Thomas says that selfishness, or disordered self-love, is the origin and root of all sin, since it makes us follow our disordered desires rather than God’s Will, who never wants us to sin. St. Augustine, in that well-known quote, says: “Two loves have built two cities; self-love, carried to the extreme of contempt for God, has built the city of the world; the love of God, carried to the extreme of contempt for oneself, has built the city of God. The one glories in himself, the other glories in the Lord.”
To achieve silence of our disordered self-love, or at least to work towards it, we have to focus on three things. First of all, our efforts must be directed towards totally submitting our desires to God and conforming ourselves with His Divine Will.
Second, we need to concentrate on God rather than on the things of this world. It is difficult for the soul to see above, so to speak, if its focus is on the things below. In order to hear God’s voice, we need to direct our soul towards the place where God’s voice comes from; we need to direct our souls to heaven rather than to earth.
Third, we need to strengthen our will against our passions. If our will is not strong enough to subdue our passions, or to deny their disordered inclinations and calm them down, then we will continually hear the voices of the passions and not be able to hear God’s voice. God speaks silently and without interior silence it difficult, or even impossible, to hear His voice.
