“Listening to Preach: Silence at the Heart of the Parables”

“Whoever has ears, let them hear.”
— Matthew 13:9

The well-known phrase “Silence is the preacher’s father” is an expression that emphasizes the importance of silence for preaching. But silence is not only one more element for the preparation and effectiveness of a preacher, it is a fundamental and permanent attitude of listening to the Word of God, in Sacred Scripture, in prayer, but also in the reality that surrounds us, in the great stories or micro-stories, which are presented to us every day, and which strongly challenge us.

For this reason, silence requires not only the absence of noise, but also an interior position of recollection, [attentive] listening and clear observation, transparent. For a preacher, this implies a time of reflection, prayer, discernment, and even destructing of learned truths, before speaking, before preaching; all this will allow us to truly connect with our own interiority, with God and with the multiple audiences that listen to us, or even refuse to listen to us or to dialogue with us. Silence, explained in this way, is the fertile ground where the seed of the Word germinates, with a capital letter.

Therefore, a reflection on listening to the Word of God could focus on the importance of paying delicate and critical attention to understand Jesus’ message, even when it is presented in parables or in ways that defy our expectations and learned codes, and let the Lord reveal Himself to us little by little.

Here is where we find the message of today’s Gospel, which invites us to listen outside our judgments and prejudices, our dreams and fears, to truly enter into the world of parables, which are stories taken from everyday life, but which want to tell us something more, which refer us to a deeper meaning, which often engage our own history.

The parables prompt in us questions; they invite us not to remain in appearances. In the story that is told or the image that is presented to us, we can ask ourselves: Where am I in this story? What does this image say to my life? About the world in which we live? About what we are willing to do?

In fact, the term “parable” comes from the Greek verb paraballein, which means “to throw before”. Pope Leo XIV recently said, “The parable throws me before it, it is a word that provokes me and pushes me to question myself.” (Pope Leo XIV – General Audience, May 21, 2025)

Today, as friar preachers, we must continue to ask ourselves if we are willing, like Dominic, to listen to the parables of this world, of the innkeeper, of the woman who had her son imprisoned, the parables of the poor of Palencia; and, today of so many men and women who suffer from war, economic insecurity, migration, while also listening to the parables of all those who have distanced themselves from the Church, of those who want to deepen their faith, of those who have not known the message of the Gospel, and of so many young people who live in discouragement or lack of meaning, as the Master of the Order invites us to do in his Relatio.

All this, exercising misericordia veritatis, is opening ourselves to the truth and to the good that is in every person and in every event, even—as we have already said—if it leads us down unexpected or challenging paths. Today’s Gospel tells us not to close our eyes and ears, but to be open to understanding with a heart of flesh and not of stone.

This exercise made our father a man of communion in the midst of divisions, facing with compassion the complex realities of his time, adapting the teachings of the Gospel to the needs of hope of his contemporaries, and transmitting joy to all those he met along the way.