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What moments of quality listening have we experienced?

Everyone loves in their own way, and parents try to love their children. But this is not the quality of love that children desire. They dream of true love, a love which is not possessive, a love which brings liberation. And this love has a very particular quality – it’s the quality of listening that parents should offer to their children. That’s the basis of all human society.

This word "Listening" resonates strongly within us, first of all through the words of Christ. We returned from our trip to Israel not so long ago. How did God call on those He loved, the prophets? "Listen Israël" - which means that if we don’t listen, we can’t understand, and if we do not understand, we can’t love.

If there are so many problems today in our couples, our families, our nations, between all people, it’s because there is no quality of listening. Everyone believes they are listening to others, but in truth, they’re not listening. We hear, and what we hear leaves us indifferent. That’s the problem with all nations today. It’s the problem with all countries, all families – so, when there are children, we can understand the chilhood delinquency which is present now all over the world. If it exists, it’s not the children who have generated it;  in truth, it’s the parents who have generated all this delinquency, through absence first of all… but not an absence of love as we understand it today. Everyone loves, in their own way, and we try to love our children. But this is not the quality of love that children desire. They dream of true love, a love which is not possessive, a love which can set them free. And this love has a very particular quality – it’s the quality of listening that parents must offer their children. That’s the basis of all human society.

If we don’t have this quality of listening, then later on, we’ll meet the tragedies of adolescence, all the problems and conflicts within couples. And then, of course, we can understand why old people are loved so poorly today, why they’re mistreated in their homes and in their own families. Old people are robbed, they’re made to suffer, they’re slapped, they’re beaten, because everyone’s waiting for the inheritance, if they’ve got one, and because they’re a nuisance for the established social order. You have to understand that it’s shameful for a society to include old people who are often bed-ridden, who have limited means of expression, and who are often inclined towards sadness and boredom because they find themselves in a state of total solitude.

So today society is reaping what it has sowed… There are generations behind us who have truly generated this familial genocide, because it is a veritable genocide. Never, in all the years that have preceded our time, have there been so many suicides, in France and all over the world. This proves that suicide is truly, if I may express it this way, the "final act" of suffering, because when someone commits suicide – at least the people who attempt suicide and, unfortunately, succeed – it’s because they can feel absolutely no-one around them any more to offer help, to love them, to understand them. So it’s a permanent tragedy that can be found in all families today.

This mission is called the "Listening Mission" - first of all you’ve said, each and every one of you, that you feel that this mission was made for you. You searched for it, and you love it … From the moment that we begin to love, it’s like good food – we’ve enjoyed a delicious meal, and we’re going to try to offer the same to those we love. Well, it’s the same thing – it’s being able to appreciate, deep within us, this quality of listening.

So, what does listening mean? In order to understand what listening means, we have to understand the relationship between God and mankind. As I told you on Good Friday, Christ came to bring us a message, not only of fraternity but also of filiality. He came to deliver the message that He is our brother. We are His sisters, we are His brothers. We have the same Mother and the same Father. That means that He makes Himself available to us, He does not separate us, He wants us all to be part of the same family. And even more than that, because in the act of offering His life for us, so that we might live, He made us His body. We are part of His body in all His gestures, all His thoughts, His sight, His hearing; all the senses of Christ are integrated within us. We are one with Him, but we can only truly be one with Him if we act from Love, either in deed or in thought. If we remain trapped in our mind, how can we expect to enter into fusion with Christ? It’s not possible.

So we have to take the path of the heart. So what’s the heart? It’s the soul… Everyone talks about the soul. You know approximately what the soul means. When you attended your seminar, you listened to what I was telling you. You think that the soul is here, of course, we situate it here, in our solar plexus. But what is it? Why is it eternal, why does it contain a memory that exceeds us by thousands and thousands of years? Why is it in communication with the stars, with everything that goes on in the universe and in all the parallel universes? This soul has a power, but not a magical power, as we sometimes hear, but a divine power – that means that you can’t order this soul about, that’s the one thing that mankind can not do. It’s the soul which governs you, you do not govern it. But in order for the soul to guide you efficiently, to love you in the way that you should be loved, you have to leave room for it, you have to allow it the means to attain the quality of guiding your life. This soul is God Himself.