The Still Small Voice

A Reflection on the Second Reading for Sunday, August 28th, 2022
​Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Hebrews
12.18-19, 22-24a

Brothers and sisters: You have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them.

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable Angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant.

Paul’s description of our encounter with God must have sounded quite surprising to his Hebrew readers. This isn’t language designed for the Gentiles, but rather for the Jews who grew up hearing and studying the Scriptures. The first section is laden with scriptural images, directly pulled from Elijah’s encounter with God in 1 Kings 19:11-13. God was not in the violence of nature, but something beyond nature.

Paul speaks again to Jewish tradition, referencing Mount Zion and Jerusalem – physical places where heaven touched earth. But it’s a new heaven and a new earth, a place where man and angel can gather together with God to feast.

For Elijah, that God wasn’t in the acts of nature was odd. God had created pillars of fire, separated the sea, and sent a myriad of plagues. God had gone ahead of them in battle, given children to aged couples, and sprinkled manna in the desert. God’s relationship with His chosen people had been so physical, so deeply related to our specific needs and particular circumstances. 

So, a God who is above that – who is speaking into our hearts rather than through a burning bush – is as challenging for us as it must have been to the early readers of the book of Kings. As Christians, our part of the story is quite similar. Jesus came and worked wonders in the presence of His people. He healed people, He walked on water, and He rose from the dead. He entered deeply into our humanity and suffered alongside us.

Now, like Elijah, our experience of God is less in the overcoming of nature, and more in the still small voice in our hearts. Not that there aren’t any miracles but, to our eyes, they’re easier to attribute to a fluke of nature half the time, and we only trust they’re a miracle after we’ve engaged in rigorous scientific investigation. We are in an age when seas aren’t parted, and pillars of fire are a natural disaster rather than divine intervention.

While God may not be making a big splash via nature, His presence is still with us. When Jesus ascended into Heaven, He didn’t leave us orphaned. He sent us His Spirit. And that Spirit dwells among us, working in and through us. He is still there in the still small voice, teaching us, guiding us, correcting us, comforting us. 

And in the Mass, we experience an incredible, incomprehensible, world-shaking miracle every day. We witness the most humble bread become the Creator of the world; and we consume Him, becoming one in the flesh with Him. The humility of the Bread of Life. The still, smallness of that Bread containing His whole presence in the Tabernacle. That is the promised feast of Heaven and Earth. That is the place where God, Angels, and humanity join together at the celebration of the new covenant. The still small voice invites us to hear Him. To believe in Him. To become like Him. That is the miracle Elijah experienced. That is what awaits us in the Mass.



Stephanie Potter

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